Just put up a sirio NV4K

[222DBFL]

Hello all. Just wanted to give my opinion about this antenna and some of my experiences with it so far. 1st off, I got this antenna from my boss as a gift, it one I have wanted for a long time. I had an accident with my sirio tornado while working on it by myself and trying to move it a bit. Big mistake!!! Needless to say the tornado looked like it went through one! So I had to put the old A99 back up. This made radio kind of not fun for me as the A99 just isn't my cup of tea. Ground noise went up 2 S-units, rx and tx range cut in half at least. Anyway. Fast forward. Took down the A99 and put up another dipole headed E/W as I have one pointed N/S already and got both of the dipoles up to 35-40ft at feedpoint. They work great for dx, but again, no local range at all. 4-5 miles tops. So now comes the new sirio vector 4000 (NV4K). I put this antenna up at 26-27ft at the feedpoint. It tuned as follows.
R=50, X=0, vswr 1.0:1. Freq= 27.400.
Man talk about flat tune!! This antenna has some ears and tx is great as well. Can hear stations as far as 100+ miles at times now and can talk to all my locals out to 50+ miles. This is on SSB. About 20 watts of power. The antenna is 28'6" and is one heck of an antenna. Sirio beefed up the joints and I've had some decent winds here the last few days and antenna stays pretty straight. I am one happy camper. I have made quite a few contacts with it and all reports are great signal and clean clear audio. Using an Icom 746 for my base station. Have 4 antennas up total. 3 for 11m and one for 144mhz rx only. It's a home brew long wire. Works well and can hear quite a few airports locally along with a lot of other stuff. Both of my dipoles are cut for 27.385 freq and hold a pretty broad range for tx. The vector 4000 is a great antenna that is the best I've ever used. I'm no antenna expert, but this antenna if tuned properly even setup at 18-20ft will perform well. It doesn't need a bunch of height although height is might for locks talk. Dx wise, when the conditions pick up I'll post back some more results and also how the antenna is holding up. Noting also that I used HD heat shrink on every joint, including the bottom section and also used no-ox on the entire antenna, minus the coax connector. A very light coat over the entire antenna and also at every joint and screw. Don't know how much it helps, but the heat shrink and no-ox should keep the antenna clean and free of water hopefully. I weather proofed connector at bottom with self amalgamating tape. This can be bought at Home Depot or Lowes. I also isolated coax from entire mast and from touching any metal from antenna feedpoint to my room. This was done with 1/2" lmr400 grommets made for 1/2" snap ins for commercial tower stuff. So none of my coax ever touches the mast at any point from top to bottom. Also used some ferrite chokes at the feedpoint as well. Anyway, here are a few photos.