Fred, shouldn’t that be in its own post? :)
This is the MFJ quality control post which morphed off the innocent Hygain post.
I’ll answer your Tornado question in that one as an owner of the product in a
separate Seco builds quality coil tuners post if you make it.
I’d like to think that antennas are a direct part of a tower and I’m personally
happy to find out from so many of you much more knowledgeable hams what your
experiences are with such products. MFJ also makes many remote switches under
their umbrella that many of us attach to our towers.
I’m in the middle here and while I’d hold my tongue about a broken Array
Solutions or DXE product (as my personal experience is that wouldn’t be the
norm), I’ve also personally been on the losing average of product defects.
My point is that it’s not surprising as sometimes I choose to gamble and be
cheap.
Tim / N6WIN.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 12:45, Fred Keen <fredkeen@ymail.com> wrote:
Jim, save your health, your time and your money, buy your equipment
elsewhere,,,
My personal experiences with MFJ have been favorable, I will continue to
consider their products. You don't have to,,,
Now, reflector related, has anyone had trouble with tornado tuners? Am getting
ready to assemble one for am 80m rotatable dipole.
Fred KC5YN
On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 11:35:17 AM CDT, Timothy Coker via TowerTalk
<towertalk@contesting.com> wrote:
I’m not questioning Jim here... or anyone else about the QC... however, it
must not be that horrendous about shipping and returns if the company continues
to stay solvent.
One could say the owner is backing the company from insolvency by use of owners
equity or credit...
Ok, then why do dealers continue to sell their stuff? It obsviously must be
profitable enough for them to a hire spot checker at the dealer like your
unnamed example.
So the profit margin must be large enough to handle the percentage of hams who
will return things for repair, exchange, or refund.
This the only party really losing is the customer.
Goes back to the logic of only buying their stuff as a gamble because you’re
decision is to knowingly do so as opposed to buying from elsewhere or building
yourself.
Every gun manufacturer makes guns that break... some break more often than
others. Everyone of them has bad designs or bad factory run lots. Ask me how I
know and I’ll give you lots of examples... even the “Perfection” marketed
brand. Same advice though... buy higher reliability if you can and want to.
73,
Tim / N6WIN.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 08:56, Jim Thomson <jim.thom@telus.net> wrote:
Simply put, MFJ + Ameritron, Hy-gain and every company that they....
rescued,
DOESNT HAVE ANY QUALITY CONTROL.... PERIOD. None, doesnt exist.
I buy a MFJ clamp on RF ammeter..and although it works, I had to calibrate
the damned thing.
The one and only calibration pot comes in one of 3 states.... fully CW,
fully CCW, or somewhere
in the middle. It would have taken em all of < 10 secs to test AND
calibrate it.
When you buy a new hy-gain yagi..and the tubing is not swedged correctly....
and either wont fit at all,
or is a sloppy fit, stop right there folks.
The money that MFJ LOSES from all the shipping and repair costs must be
staggering. They just lost all
their meager profit margin right then and there. When 20-35% of their
products get sent back, the time wasted
in opening up the box, sending it to correct dept, repairing it, boxing back
up, shipping back out, endless e mails and
phone calls etc, they are wasting one helluva lot of time.... and $$$ .
## If the guy doing the swedging has the swedging machine setup up wrong, he
ends up cranking out hundreds of
tubes that are either swedged too much..or too little. With a good process
control in place, the bad tubing could be
quickly narrowed down to a specific lot number, date of manufacture..and
employee responsible for the error. In short,
It should have never left the factory. Random samples should have been checked
for fit and finish. The 1st 1-3 tubes should have
been checked, immediately after the swedging machine was initially tweaked for
a specific production run.
## VE6RF buys himself an Ameritron AL-600 SS linear amplifier. Blows up
within 2 mins. Sends it back. Replacement also blows
up within 3 mins. 3rd one also blew up. Turns out their was an air gap
between final transistors and the heatsink ! wtf ?
The dealer simply kept sending out a new one..and repairing the old one..
WAY after the fact. The idea was to keep the customer happy,
so send out a new one asap.
## I know one fellow, who shall remain nameless, who is contracted out by a
USA dealer, to open up , test, repair and rebox all the
Ameritron amplifiers the dealer sells. The dealer was getting fed up with the
huge return on bad amps. The idea was to find and fix
the issues, before shipping it out. Otherwise, the damage caused by the poor
build quality was insane. Tubes blown up, B+ supplies
blown up, SS final transistors blown to bits, bandswitches incorrectly
wired, blown to bits. One bad connection on an EQ resistor that
sits in parallel with each electrolytic HV cap, means that cap gets the FULL
B+ across it. 2800-3200 vdc will of course blow a 450 vdc rated
lytic into shrapnel. Then the flying shrapnel does even more damage with
whatever it hits. Replacing a band switch is a night mare too, try it
sometime.
## MFJ has always been a crap shoot, then Ameritron, and now Hy-gain and
every thing else they handle.
## There is no way in hell they even test any of their products. They dont
have a test program at all. They build it,
box it, ship it to a dealer..who re-ships to joe ham. Never seen a QC
sticker or similar on an MFJ et all product.
Dealer repairs the defective unit in most cases. For MFJ to implement a
basic simple QC testing and calibration
program would cost them very little. They would save a ton of $$. Eye ball
the newly completed B+ supply. Then bring it up
slowly with a variac, using real low current fuses in each leg of the 240
line. Any defect, and the small value fuses will blow asap.
Find and fix the issue. Re-test, done. Then quickly do 100 more of em. No
more blown up B+ supplies, and pissed off end users.
## These days, I advise folks to buy TWO of what they want from MFJ /
Ameritron etc, then ship back the defective
unit that doesnt work. In some cases you might get two bad units. In rare
cases you might get two good units.
## Just before I retired from the local telco, the company decides to replace
all of its aging DC to dc power supplies. These
are the types that have -52 vdc going into them..and + 5 V @ 40A on the
output side. Verizon shipped us 50,000 new
power supplies. Installed in the middle of the night, and tested 5 ways to
sunday. We only did one half of the redundant
setup, then came back 3 weeks later to install the other half. The idea was
not to install new supplies into both halves of a
redundant setup, in case both had problems and took down a piece of equipment.
So each site required two visits, 3 weeks apart.
Each site also got spare new power supplies, and those too, had to be tested by
stuffing into the various bays. Tedious process.
At the end of it all, we had ZERO bad supplies..and thats after being in
service, with a full bore normal load running 24/7, after
2 years. I never sent one back for repair, even years later.
## also had to replace hundreds of expensive digital clocks used for timing
digital spans, switching gear etc. They were $5000.00 each.
We only found one bad unit, just one. And never replaced any of the other
several hundred units years later.
end of rant
Jim VE7RF
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