I just read the Mosley ad again after setting it aside for a few days. If
there were licenses for marketers like physicians, who ever cooked up this
baby might be looking for a marketing malpractice lawyer!
First they have given the negative test results 10 times the exposure that
they previously had. Many of the guys who go to the antenna forum at
Dayton are not Mosley prospects anyway. Many of their prospects might
never have known about this stuff if they hadn't featured it in the ad!
They don't mention what conditions are "wrong to begin with" or why. My
first math professor at UT would have called this paragraph "much waving of
the arms" rather than "rigorous argument". If I bought a PRO-57B, would I
need to mount it at 500 feet "to see its gain"? Am I to assume that if
both antennas had been mounted at 500 feet that the PRO-57B would have
looked good? Is low gain at low height really "actually a positive" ??
This sounds a little like the old "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"
If they can really give their antenna a "lower take off angle" that all the
others, when it is mounted at the same height, they need to write that
paper up for the physics journals.
If they have ever measured their antennas in direct comparison to others
they don't mention it here.
I especially like the scientifically accurate claims like "will take on a 5
and 6 tower mono band station setup" Take it on yes, win, no. "Nobody
will move you..", maybe they'll just talk right over you!
I have nothing against Mosley. I do not think they are handling this well,
though. I don't think K7LXC and N0AX set out to make Mosley look bad. I
don't think they tried dosens of test protocols and then selected the one
that made the Mosley antenna show the least gain. I knew that K7LXC sold
some Force 12 antennas, but I didn't think that made their results per se
inaccurate. I wonder why all the other antennas didn't come at looking
bad, if they were trying to make the Force 12 look the best. I also
presume that since Mosley is primarily attacking the motives of the
testers, they do not have any valid criticisms of their methodology other
than the vague stuff about "the conditions they used".
I would like to see the same tests repeated by someone else, to see how
close the results are. I would also like to see them done on higher towers
to what difference it might make. I would like to see Mosley explain
exactly what it is about the PRO57's pattern or feed method that makes it
measure so differently from the others, and suggest a range and procedure
that would show the antenna to its best advantage.
In all, it will stimulate a lot of discussion and thought, and that's good.
73 John N5CQ
-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Smith [SMTP:n4zr@contesting.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 1999 9:59 AM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Mosley ad
Finally got my QST and read the ad. I had been following the exchange on
this reflector about the tribander tests with great interest, and remain
somewhat skeptical of the precision of the tests, but what really shocked
me was Mosley's allegation that K7LXC and N0AX set out to discredit Mosley
and other tribander manufacturers because they were secretly allied with
(implicitly, in the pay of) another antenna manufacturer.
In my opinion such charges, if unfounded, come perilously close to libel,
since Steve and Ward are scarcely public figures outside our little circle.
If Mosley can produce specifics, they should; if not, then they owe the
testers an apology.
(Forgive me if I'm a little hot about this, but I serve on a local
government body whose members have just been similarly attacked in the
local press as "obviously on the take." The smearing of people's
reputations is taken all too lightly these days!)
73, Pete N4ZR
Sometimes a tower is just a tower
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