CM Quantum 1111: Mine, all mine!!!
Okay, I'm talking to Marv, who ran Marv's TV here in the Vancouver area for over 40 years until he retired a few years ago. He's done hundreds of antenna installations all over the Lower Mainland in his time but he's tired and his memory is fading. He tells me about an old antenna he's got in his barn, so I drive right over there and back up my pickup truck to the doors. Here's what he has:
One
never opened, brand new in the box, shiny, fresh as a daisy
Channel Master Quantum 1111 VHF/FM antenna! CM hasn't built any of these big beauties in quite a few years, and we figure this particular one is from the late 1980s-early 90s. CM went through some financial troubles over the years and dropped these from their product line. What a shame.
In a 1982 article in
VHF-UHF Digest writer Bill Thompson said that hard core DX'ers back then were using either the Jerrold (now Wade) VIP-307, the Winegard CH-5200, the Channel Master 3617B, or the Channel Master Quantum 111X series (1110 through 1115), but that the CM111X series clearly had the best all around reception while the others led in some areas but not in others.
Now a CM1111 is mine, all mine! Tigerbangs, eat your heart out!
This thing is the Cadillac of all VHF antennas, and I mean that in a couple of ways: first, it has probably the highest front-to-back ratio ever built (you WANT that in VHF but not so much in UHF) and second, it is a dual-boom monster that parks up on your roof like a 1960s Sedan de Ville!
Instead of one front-to-rear boom it has 2, one over the other. This thing is built for huge wind and snow load but you have to have a stout mast.
The box was the old CM one with the colour spectrum printed on the side. When I tried to pick it up it disintegrated from mildew, old age, and mouse dining, so I laid the antenna directly onto the 8-foot box of my truck and it hung out an additional 1.5 feet. With the front extension added this thing is about 11 feet long. I haven't spread out all the dipoles and directors yet, but when I do I'll take a digital snapshot and post it here.
I asked Marv how much $$$ and I almost fainted when he asked for an arm and my right reproductive pouch, so I looked inside his barn and pointed at a few things. After some dickering I drove away with these too:
1 - Channel Master 0094 PreAmp, which fits inside an underbelly trap door of the 1111 antenna and is an integrated 300 to 75 ohm balun, FM trap, and preamp. With this preamp riding on an 1111 Marv estimates about 35db gain! He says customers in the Lower Mainland, including on the North Van side, and out in Mission were clearly getting SeaTac VHF stations with this setup.
1 - old Delhi UHF 4 bay Bowtie Reflector in good shape that looks a lot more like a CM 4221 than a new Wade 4BT-1483.
1 - coil of shielded 300 ohm balanced cable (I'm sure I don't need it, but somebody might since its shielded).
1 - big box full of clamps, splitters, brackets, paraphernalia, doodads, geegaws, thingamajigs, whatchamacallits, and other stuff.
All right, I am a complete geek who might have had a bit more money than sense that day, but at least now I own
the best deep fringe VHF and UHF antenna gear a guy could ever want.
I have no place to mount it! My north property line has a 150 foot Douglas Fir and a bunch of red cedars, and the south property line (in the way of SeaTac signals) has a row of 60 foot red cedars. I would need to put up quite a tower here... unless... I could mount those antennas up on top of the 150 foot fir! Wow, the reception would be spectacular!
Naw, I've been through that idea from a-to-z and it won't work...
Anyway the wife and I would like to move out of the metropolis to a more rural area so a tower would be more feasible at that time. Also even when the SeaTac and Canadian VHF stations wind down over the next several years I'll still have the amazing FM radio pull of that 1111. We love KPLU-FM but haven't been able to listen to it since we dropped cable tv.
Some day I will take down my BEV dish and fork over my last monthly gouging to them, and I'll proudly raise a mast holding my Channel Master 4228 UHF 8 bay Bowtie Reflector and my Channel Master 1111 VHF/FM antennas.
It will be glorious... (wipes a tear from the corner of his eye)
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