DX Engineering XB-5 HEXX Beam
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| Frequency | 14 / 18 / 21 / 24 / 28 MHz |
| Bands | 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, 10m |
| Gain | 5.2 dBi (published beam gain, with F/B over 20 dB - notably honest, un-inflated figures for the class) |
| TX power | 1500 W (1500 W rating) |
| Modes | SSB, CW, AM, FM, digital |
| Connector | SO-239 (UHF female); single 50-ohm feed for all five bands |
| feedpoint | SO-239 via the rigid feeder system and balun |
Estimated (unverified): exact US street price (DXE listing bot-walled; inferred from CAD $1,800 third-party retail)
Directivity per pound is the hexbeam's whole argument, and the XB-5 executes it with DX Engineering's hardware fetish: real gain and a genuine front-to-back from an antenna a TV rotator turns, a push-up mast carries, and one person assembles. The broadband G3TXQ-style elements cover each band edge to edge, every component is replaceable from the catalog, and the published numbers are honest ones.
Two elements per band has a ceiling: a full-size tribander out-points it by a couple of real dB, and 40 m is absent entirely. Wire-and-spreader construction means ice and falling branches are its natural enemies, and the component-kit pricing structure makes the true all-in cost easy to underestimate.
The right beam for the biggest slice of hams: those with a rotator budget, a modest mast, and no room for a 20-foot boom. It gives up the last few decibels to full-size aluminum and gives back everything else - weight, wind, turning radius, and honesty in the spec sheet.
The hexagonal beam is what happens when hams admit that most of a Yagi's difficulty lives in its width: fold each band's two elements into an 'M' shape over six fiberglass spreaders, and a five-band directional antenna collapses into an inverted umbrella twenty-two feet across with an eleven-foot turning radius. The XB-5 is DX Engineering's current production of the idea (successor to its decade-run HEXX Beam Mark 2) with ten insulated-wire elements, two per band, on 20 through 10 meters including the WARC pair, all fed through one 50-ohm line.
The design lineage matters and is honored explicitly: the broadband hexbeam geometry that covers each band edge to edge without retuning was pioneered by Steve Hunt, G3TXQ, and when DX Engineering launched the XB-5 after his death in 2018, the company's own announcement framed the antenna in his memory. The published performance keeps the same spirit of honesty, 5.2 dBi of gain and better than 20 dB front-to-back, free-space-class figures rather than the height-boosted marketing numbers common in beam spec sheets. The real-world pitch: most of a small Yagi's punch from 25 pounds, 5.2 square feet of wind area, and hardware a trapped tribander owner would consider a vacation.
The trade is fixed by geometry: two elements per band is the hexbeam's ceiling, full-size beams out-point it by a couple of decibels, and ice storms are its predator. The generic design is documented on our hex beam page for homebrewers; the XB-5 is the buy-it-engineered version, sold modularly down to the hub, spreaders, feeder, and wire kits, which is both a serviceability virtue and a reason to total the cart carefully, the complete antenna lands around thirteen hundred dollars at retail, not the impulse-buy number the modular pricing can suggest.