RCA VH226E Programmable Outdoor Antenna Rotator

Using for 6 meter Moxon and 2 meter Yagi antennas. Works well and withstands Oklahoma storms and the winds sweeping down the plains! Have had up through tornadic storm with 80 mph winds, ice storm, and sustained 50-55mph winds during spring. No damage seen to the braking system and works very well. Much cheaper option than ham rotator and can handle 3 sq ft of antenna well.UPDATE: Have now been through 91mph wind gusts of 4-5 seconds with 15 min of sustained 65-70mph winds and still doing well. Oklahoma is lovely during Spring and early summer:) My rotator is mounted on a well guyed aluminum flag pole of 26’ above ground and 30” below ground in concrete. This has been my 6m/2m mast for 2 years now and through countless storms. Everything works well. I do annual maintenance checks on the system and tighten, reseal, etc. I remain happy with this system..UPDATE Mar 2023: Changed antennas to an Eantenna 2850 6m/10m Moxon and a Create 108-1300MHz Log Periodic just over 1 year ago. The RCA rotor is handling the heavier load and increased wind load very well. No issues at all, despite severe storms with 70-80mph wind gusts and hours of steady 30 mph Oklahoma winds with frequent gusts up to 50 mph. For the techies, my total antenna & mast weight is 9.6 kg and the wind load is 0.21 m sq. My other RCA rotator system for my LEO VU satellite array is also holding up equally well. These rotators have been a very cost-effective investment for my ham station and should handle just about any residential TV antenna on the market.

This is a good unit for a small lightweight rotor. It is being used to turn a vertical receiving loop and it is working well. I was surprised to hear how quiet it is when rotating. The control box only shows direction in degrees / 10, so for instance a reading of 12 on the controller means 120 degrees. I also had to enlarge the opening for my rotor control cable which is flat instead of round - possibly round cable would not have presented any issues. But those are small nits for what is a very nice rotor for the price. As long as you don't overload it with an antenna that is too large, and pay attention to getting the control cable wiring to match between the 3 connections on both ends, you should have no issues at all.

My older controller had the simple dial control, this one has a remote and is programable. I did not replace it for this feature but was happy about it. I replaced it because my old rotor would not hold my antenna in the position I selected, the wind would move it. This new controller works perfect and holds my giant antenna where I point it. Read the instructions for setting it up, you have to initialize it, and calibrate it before you can use it. I use this rotor to control my DXing antenna. So I can set button A for Detroit, B for Lansing, C for Flint etc... really handy.

The unit appears very well built and functions as advertised with one exception that depends on your TV. The literature on the unit indicates that it has 12 memory locations that you can use to find and store antenna locations that are optimum for your reception area. And this is true, BUT:If you have a TV (like ours) that cannot permanently store the digital channels then there is no way to use this, or any, antenna positioner without rescanning the channels each time you move the antenna. If this was the old days of analog TV, it would work great as the channel numbers are locked in.We have an "older" Samsung flatscreen TV, probably 8 years old or so. Like all digital TVs, you hit the auto-scan and it finds all the channels it can for the given antenna position. Then if you move the antenna (manually or with this remote device) you scan again which erases all the previously found channels and populates the list with the new found channels. I did a lot of research to see if there was a way to lock them in and found none. I tried saving the channels as favorites, but these got erased also when doing a new scan.So, if you have a TV that can properly store the channels, or just want a remote positioner for that convenience, I think it works very well. If you want to use the position memory function to quickly move from one station to another and your TV can't permanently store the channels, then you will have to scan each time you rotate the antenna. And that doesn't work for me.