I'll kick something in here.
I have a Mosley TA34 at 103 feet. It has four elements, covers only 20,
15 and 10, and has a 21-foot boom. This is my only antenna for 20 and
10. On the same tower at 48 feet, I have a Hy-Gain 155CA (5 el, 26-foot
boom) fixed on Europe. Most of the time, during the peak of the EU
openings, the two antennas are within a gnat's whisker of each other on
15-meter EU signals. The 155CA has much better directivity, of course.
The TA34 is a pretty good contest antenna. It is rugged, has reasonable
gain, and good SWR bandwidth (not an issue to me). It also has lousy F/B
(averages about 10 dB, at most 15). I've measured this stuff with
calibrated step attenuators and I use side-by-side radios for the
two-antenna comparisons, where I can A/B switch either rig to either
antenna and listen to the same signal on both rigs at the same time.
Varying conditions being what they are, this comparison may not be
entirely useful, but I made 840 Qs on 20 meters and 740 Qs on 15 (using
mainly the monobander on 15) in the CQWW CW contest last fall as part of
my all-band effort. I have previously made as many as 1100 QSOs on 20
with the tribander in all-band contests. (That was in ARRL CW last
winter; in the 1996 CQWW CW the TA34 was good for 990 Qs on 20.) This is
not shabby, and I doubt that I could have done much better with
something like a 204BA at the same height in these events. If pressed, I
wouldn't even mind having a two-high stack of TA34s at 100/50 or
thereabouts.
The TA34 is not an icon to worship. It will become a
side-mount-rotatable SS/multiplier antenna at 35 feet once the second
tower goes up. But I would recommend the TA34 to anyone looking for a
solid value in a medium-sized tribander that has very few parts and has
required essentially no maintenance over the past nine years. The one
thing I would strongly recommend is replacing the single sheet-metal
screws at the tubing junctions with two aluminum rivets at each
location, but that's the most major issue I have with its construction.
OTOH, the big, heavy, expensive, try-to-do-everything Mosley antennas
are, as K7LXC more kindly puts it, *junk*.
--73, Rus, NJ2L
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