February 18, 2015
Back in September of 2010, I purchased a Diamond 400 Antenna and it has worked very well for me on several vehicles, including my current Ford Excursion.
The Diamond 400 mounts on the edge or lip of the vehicle or other solid conductive material that can be used to support the antenna. It is secured with four set screws and is a solid mount.
My current antenna is the ATAS-120, which has a wide wind profile and have only had one issue, of which I believe the root cause to be “operator error” (more on that later).
The issues that I have with the Diamond 400 mount center around the supplied cable (hard-wired) and conductivity of the mount itself.
The hard-wired coax connection is streamline however in my case the connection was problematic. On two separate occasions I had to disassemble the mount to resolder the center conductor to the mount.
The Diamond 400 mount is designed to allow the mounted antenna to point vertically regardless of th orientation of the mount. It does this through the use of two articulating joints secured with allen head bolts. The joint closest to the antenna is designed with two conical surfaces with splines to provide a strong joint and this is well done. The issue is that these surfaces oxidize over time and the ground connection fails. This problem made itself known to me first by degraded overall rig performance however I couldn’t pinpoint the problem at first. The next gremlin that appeared was the loss of my ability to auto-tune the ATAS-120 on any band except 20 Meters. A quick internet search will reveal many derogatory posts about this antenna and many blame the antenna. One post however made reference to ground issues I ran a short piece of bell wire from the antenna to the mount itself, bypassing the articulating mount closest to the antenna and my tuning and performance issues went away.
The coax that came with the mount was very thin, I believe it was RG-188. From a performance perspective I have nothing to complain about. From a durability stand-point, I have a different story to tell. The first important thing to say is that from a handling perspective every precaution was taken to care for this coax cable. In spite of the care given this cable I experienced broken shield connectios on both ends of the cable. Because the cable is hard wired in to the mount, after making a couple of repairs, I finally decided to change out the entire cable for a length of RG-58.
The last, albeit rather minor, issue that I have found with the Diamond K400 mount is cosmetic. Currently the mount is on the passenger side of my Excursion. The side of the mount facing forward has lost all of the black paint and looks shoddy.
All in all I am happy with the mount however it comes with its set of challenges.
On that note – 73’s
KE7TVZ Out
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