Help

[JesseJamesDallas]

Don't know much about the Galaxy 2517, other than they don't make'em anymore...I have a RCI 2980WX base, and a Cobra 2000 GTL, and between those two IMO the Cobra 2000 GTL kicks the RCI's butt!

Right now the RCI is back in it's box, and I'm using the Cobra because I get way more complements on it, than I do on the RCI...AM and SSB. Hard to beat a good Cobra 2000, hard part tho is finding one that hasn't had a thousand golden screwdrivers stuck in the back of it, or a bunch of extra switch's stuck on the face. (and at a decent price)

Regardless of which radio you go with, don't go cheap on your antenna set-up if you really are interested in getting out. A beam antenna is the way to go if your wanting to shoot some skip, since you can point the thing in the general direction of where the skip is coming from... Ground planes will work too, but your not going to have the same effect on transmitting your signal as you would with a beam...

I prefer the dual polarity type beams over the single polarity type like the MaCo 3 element, mainly because it gives me the option to go vertical or horizontal...Horizontal works best (IMO) for DX, where vertical works best for local. So having a antenna that has dual polarity gives you the best of both worlds all in one antenna.

Another thing is going to be the height..."Higher the better!" 30' will work great in most locations, but like I said, Higher the better...

I did have my antenna up on a 30' tower to start, then later added one more section to get up to 40', and I could tell the difference with just adding 10 more feet...Another point to "height" I have a friend that lives maybe 30-40 miles away that runs basically the same set-up as I have, only his antenna is up around 60'...A-hole cuts my lips off every time we get on the air at the same time...

I did have a Lightning L4 quad up, but kept having problems with the wires breaking on it, and having to bring it down for repairs after strong storms, which got old after a while, then one good storm finally turned it into a pretzel which gave me a good reason to get a new antenna...

What I have now is similar to the L4, it's a MaCo shooting star 4 element dual polarity antenna... and so far it's been threw several strong storms and nothing has bothered it...Can't beat the L4 quad tho for making contacts, but they will need some attention occasionally after storms blow threw.