I haven't installed it yet but will have it up soon. One of the longer radials doesn't want to screw in. I'll have to find something to chase the threads and make sure they are right. I'm also not sure is SO239 the best choice of connection? That's a VHF connector.

I wanted a good receiving antenna for my SDRPlay and this Dicone fit the bill nicely. It arrived a day early , and I put it together and iinstalled it in under an hour. It is going up on the chimney soon.

Nice well built antenna just a bit deaf. Good in confined spaces!

The reception performance of the Moonraker antenna is not as good as an active dipole antenna or a wire antenna. I have installed the Moonraker antenna next to my active dipole and can remotely switch the antenna for the SDR receiver with a coax relay to test both antennas fairly. The Moonraker antenna receives much less on the HAM bands 80m, 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m 12m and 10m. Also in the upper range UHF and VHF it may unfortunately not convince. 73 de HB9RYZ Wolfgang www.hb9ryz.ch

Bought this antenna based on reviews I’ve read online and seen on YouTube.

I was hoping to mount it out side on its new shiny 20’ aluminium scaffold pole, but it seems to work as well as it’s going to, sat on its own radials in my attic, next to my now partially dismantled old Revco Discone.

Even that antenna has scope for an additional whip on top. I’ll need to find the original specs online.

Even if I do endeavour to mount externally, there’ll be no great gain, for the effort involved, due to my local topography/surroundings.

I’ve got houses about 500 mts away, and their door steps are higher than my roof line, so my reception is screened by the height of the land and buildings in the direction of most interest by about 200 degrees of arc for any low level reception.

This antenna is solely for my new SDRPlay DX which is connected to ANT ‘A’ and so think it’s linked with RG213

It worked first time, first use, but I’ll need to test some more, and I’m still learning how to best use SDRUno.

The build quality of this antenna looks tidy, and the only issue I had was a small grub screw I could not find, though it’s not mentioned in the instructions iirc. ( secures the short stub mast tube ) but contact was made and that’s easily replaceable.

Looks great. Works great too.
Call back in 3 or 4 years, I'll know more about the antenna then. So far happy.

i have had my hf discone antenna for well over a year now, i took the advice and used thread locking glue from the other review and haven't had any problems with things falling off, mounted one meter above my house i am very happy with the performance from this antenna.

used on my sdr (rspdx) i use the hf discone antenna in partnership with my mla30+ mag loop antenna, the hf discone antenna has a brilliant LW and MW reception where the loop is pretty weak in those frequencies..

Although i find the loop is a better antenna on SW in general the scanking HF discone does receive the 25m band better than the mla30, and also the 10m band and above is much stronger where the mla30 starts to weaken again..

the reason i like the hf discone antenna so much is that it is a kind of hybrid antenna that gives you really good Dx results on LW MW, it's almost as good on SW as the mla30 and then you get so much more coverage because the vhf and uhf receiving is faultless, having such a wide operating range like this is very rare and it has widened my listening experience so much too the better!

i think scanking should make a version 2 of this antenna and improve the construction with locking nuts but that's my only criticism

You can get your own lock nuts to put on this antenna , And if you use two on each arm they will lock together & Will not come of in the wind .

I bought one of these in May 2021. First impressions were good ,it is a large sturdy discone. However, as noted on other reviews, the radials only screw in, there is no locking allen key type extra fitting. I screwed all radials in hand tight then using mole grips tightened them as hard as I dared being mindful not to strip the threads. i live on the south coast in quite a windy location and after the first big storm I had lost 6 out of the 8 large and 2 of the small radials into the garden! Plan B was to use Loctite thread locker to secure the radials to the unit. This worked a treat, however a very unpleasant downside to this was that now the radials were secure, the aerial began to resonate VERY loudly in the wind with a constant woowoowoo noise which travelled down the aerial, pole and wall bracket and ended up so loud, particularly at night, that myself and my partner ended up having to sleep wearing ear plugs on windy nights! Eventually I was forced to give up and moved the aerial into the loft where it is obviously silent, but has significantly reduced the reception to a point where I am going to purchace another SSS Mk2 Super Scan Stick which I had previously, and lasted a good 5 years. It's a shame about the HF Discone as reception was great but the noise from the thing became unbearable.

As a discone it is low-gain so performs modestly using RTL-SDR or Airspy R2, but significantly better using the more sensitive Airspy HF+ all the way down to VLF pulling in many airport beacons and VLF signals across the world. I also found it is resonant on 2m/70cm, I asked Moonraker about this and they said it should be ok for QRP transmit, which is a nice bonus.

I put this on a 8ft mast outside my roof in 2019. It is a BIG aerial, even with a 12" standoff the radials extend over my roof tiles, the neighbours definitely noticed, as did my wife but luckily it was too late by then.
I live on an exposed hillside location and I can report it does NOT perform well against the wind, the lower radials are friction-fit only, no locking nuts, and so within a month one of the lower radials unscrewed itself and landed in the garden, the rest fell off within a year and some were damaged in the process (bent, worn theads).
I cannot easily access it now to repair it so I have had to make do. Without radials it still works as ever for HF reception but it's unsurprisingly deaf on VHF/UHF.

Sadly the HF Discone isn't suitable for me as it needs a sheltered location, someday I'll manage get it down and replace it with something more robust and aerodynamic.