[TowerTalk] Mosley bashing -( or any other bashing )

Thu Feb 19 16:41:42 EST 2015

I've had many kinds of beams including tribanders and 5-banders over the years and my impression always was "any kind of beam is better than no beam," and that the first 6 dB or so you get is simply by having a horizontally polarized antenna up high enough above ground to have a low enough reflection angle to work DX.  :-)

Everything after that is gravy.

-WB2WIK

-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of M. Kent Miller
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 1:35 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Mosley bashing -( or any other bashing )

This whole discussion reminds me of why I cancelled my subscription to Consumer Reports years ago. Their evaluations indicated that every thing I had, appliances, cars, etc., etc. was just absolutely no good at all. 
Everything they said was " bad " I had found to be good and, in fact, was well pleased and had enjoyed good performance and dependability from all of them.
If a Mosley or whatever you' ve got works for you, consider it a good antenna. My 20 year old TH-11DX works just great for me .... but I' ll bet some would say it' s no good.

73,
Kent - K4MK

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-request at contesting.com
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 12:00 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: TowerTalk Digest, Vol 146, Issue 55

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Coax cable economics. (was Mosley Antenna (Earl Morse)
   2. Re: Mosley Antenna Question (bill steffey)
   3. Mosley bashing (greenacres113 at charter.net)
   4. Re: [Bulk] Re:  Coax cable economics. (was Mosley (Grant Saviers)
   5. Mosley (Charles Evans Painting)
   6. Re: Mosley Antenna Question (W0MU Mike Fatchett)
   7. Mosley..again. (Jim Thomson)

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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 07:28:09 -0800
From: "Earl Morse" <kz8e at wt.net>
To: <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Coax cable economics. (was Mosley Antenna
Message-ID: <20150219072809.39DC6536 at m0005296.ppops.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

When I hijacked this thread it was my intention to just point out that you should make a loss/gain budget and determine where you could get the best bang for your buck.  Let the numbers tell you whether you should put up a new antenna, buy an amp, or get better coax.  It is going to be dependent on your operating practice, the microwave guy is going to have a whole different list of items to improve his setup than the lowband operator.

Instead, I got 4 sources of cheaper coax, one comment of being full of "sh*t", a couple of "Does it really matter?", and a couple of "all the tenths of a dB eventually add up to something that matters".

All true to some extent.

The point is that it is "your" budget.  Gain wise and money wise.  It is going to be tailored to you and what is most important to you may not be to somebody else's situation.  Roger, K8RI, makes a good point, "Can you hear a dB?"  When you have a couple of them you can.  His other good point is something you can't buy and that is operating technique.  A good op is worth a couple of dB right off the bat, nobody admits they are a crappy op just like nobody admits they are a bad driver.

So check out your own station, figure out how much gain you get if you buy the best coax.  Analyze your noise floor.  Maybe you have a FB signal but can't hear anything because the noise floor is too high. (Great comment on RX antennas, Jim K9YC, wish I could get my RX loops to work even partly as good as the Beverages did.)  When you figure out how much money or effort each improvement is going to net you then it will be obvious what your next station improvement project should be.

Earl
N8SS

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 10:24:43 -0500
From: bill steffey <ny9h at comcast.net>
To: <Towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Mosley Antenna Question
Message-ID: <20150219152445.39860AC9B02 at mx.contesting.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

OOOKAY ,,,
I loved my classic 33....in the 70s.

No too many components to screw up....

Rather than just talking about performance or perceived performance, let's get some data or anecdotes on WHY these devices perform as such.

So to what do we/you attribute the lack of performance???
traps ???   feed arrangements??  element length/spacing ???\\

bill  ny9h/3
.

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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 09:56:38 -0600
From: greenacres113 at charter.net
To: "'towertalk at contesting.com'" <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Mosley bashing
Message-ID: <uFwe1p00R55dDlS01FweLS at charter.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Gee I guess when I got my TA 33 50 yr.s ago I should have taken others advice. A bad antenna. Except I've installed a lot more than one 3 el tribander of other manufacture for guys. Hygains were a mech.
nightmare. Cushcraft used hose clamps for goodness sake.

I claim no tech. prowess or reams of lab paper to back up what I say.Just real life experience.My origional 50 yr old TA 33 is still wrking after two moves. Survived a tornado & lots of big wind.

I've never run over 600w & the antenna has never been over 55' high.
I guess the 360 entities I have confirmed was just dumb luck. I need 3 more on CW & 2 on SSB. Just lucky I guess.

I truely don't want to start flaming & I won't reply to them. But not every one has bad experience with any product. it's what you do with it. So many people either use a product wrong or thru their lack of knowledge dis it as bad when properly used it performs well. I have only used a few pieces of MFJ products & they worked as described but many people bash them. That can be said of a lot of products that have taken bashing on this & other reflectors. In the end it comes down to whether we're satisfied or not. Some products have design errors which you can't overcome. That you can't fix easily. But it also is a personal decision to buy one brand over another. Whether you're happy with that product to up to you..

K9IL

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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 08:00:14 -0800
From: Grant Saviers <grants2 at pacbell.net>
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] [Bulk] Re:  Coax cable economics. (was Mosley
Message-ID: <54E6088E.7050803 at pacbell.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

One additional consideration not mentioned so far is the QRN situation at the DX end.  When the noise is S5-6+ at the DX station, a few db can make the difference for making the Q or not.  Same for QRN levels the EU guys and some DXpeditions have.  Many times I can hear them fine, but they can't hear me (QRO & 4 elements @ 100') over their QRN/QRM.

Again, the ERP does count and it can come from better yagis, taller towers, stacks, or amps.  Then subtract the losses.  A coax upgrade for 3db is much cheaper than a 5 element monoband owa, doubling amp power, a tiny fraction of the cost of 30' more tower, and insignificant vs a second yagi in a stack.

Grant KZ1W

On 2/19/2015 7:05 AM, Richard Solomon wrote:
> Your premise might be valid if you were the only DX'er in the area, 
> but when you have the competition that we had on the East Coast, then 
> my statements, while not based on true scientific data, still are 
> valid.
>
> The truth is in the pudding ...
>
> 73, Dick, W1KSZ
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 8:01 AM, Courtney Judd <k4wi at k4wi.net> wrote:
>
>
snip

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 10:15:52 -0600
From: Charles Evans Painting <cvevans989 at hotmail.com>
To: "towertalk at contesting.com" <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Mosley
Message-ID: <BLU169-W10591A5A71BFECD8F2233208D2D0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Love my Mosley 33...  enough said

------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 09:31:54 -0700
From: W0MU Mike Fatchett <w0mu at w0mu.com>
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Mosley Antenna Question
Message-ID: <54E60FFA.3090504 at w0mu.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

The issue is that nobody wants to hear or find out that what they bought was not as good as another product or that product X which is less might be better.

If you are happy with your Mosley great.  Then why get your panties in a bunch.

Whatever you have now is probably better than what you had before, right?

I worked a pile of DX with a TH7DXX and a TA33JR.  I have worked a heck of a lot more with my SteppIR's.  Is a non trapped antenna better than a trapped one.  You can do the research on that.  I am pretty sure the
TA33 jr ended up in V47 land and it made a pile of contacts.  It was simple to build setup and use.  Did the Monobanders we brought down later work better....Yep.  Do I have any regrets, nope.  Most multiband antennas require you to give up something to have multiple bands.

I got into the same conversation on Facebook with people about the Baofung or whatever it is dual band HT that you can buy for $35.00 or less.  People that spent way more another brand radio, went out of their way to bash the $35.00 radio and they never even owned one.

Operator skill plays a big part of working DX.  You can have the biggest and best but if you don't know when and where to call you probably are not getting in the log.

Mike W0MU

On 2/18/2015 9:54 PM, ve4xt at mymts.net wrote:
> The point many Mosley supporters don't seem to understand is that from 
> the results of one antenna, you cannot derive any knowledge about 
> whether it is outperforming another yagi of comparable cost or dimensions.
>
> A person who puts up a TH7 and uses it exclusively for ten years can 
> proclaim he was happy with the performance, but has no basis for 
> proclaiming it would have outperformed, say, a Skyhawk, JK Tribander, 
> X7 or even a Pro57.
>
> Someone who took down a TA 33 and replaced it with an A4s and notices 
> an improvement DOES have a basis for regretting buying the TA33, however.
>
> An engineer and a tower expert who create a scientific plan for 
> comparing antennas and execute that plan do have a basis for saying 
> that one brand of antennas was inferior to competing, comparable models, as well.
>
> The plural of anecdote is not data. Only by sound comparison can one 
> say for certain that spending $1,500 with Mosley is better than 
> spending
> $1,500 with DX Engineering or Hy-Gain or JK.
>
> 73, Kelly
> ve4xt
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Feb 18, 2015, at 9:37 PM, "David Gallatin via TowerTalk" 
>> <towertalk at contesting.com> wrote:
>>
>> Indeed everything works. That supposition does not rule out some 
>> things working far better then others with the proof being in the 
>> empirical evidence of experience by making contacts.  I don't need an 
>> antenna range or a model to tell me the Mosley tri-bander that's 
>> going up in the spring is going to be light years better then the MFJ 
>> loop tuner I have sitting on a chair in my spare bedroom. As for 
>> measuring performance... I have yet to hear an Asiatic station, much 
>> less work one. I expect that will change with the advent of my yagi 
>> going up and when the QSL cards start rolling in from JA that's all 
>> the measurement I need.  73, David, AA9G
>>
>> ex W5DCG and KC9EEV
>>
>>
>>
>>     On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 1:20 PM, "john at kk9a.com" 
>> <john at kk9a.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> N6BT wrote an article in the July 2000 issue of QST called 
>> "Everything Works"
>>
>> You do not need an efficient antenna to work DX and without a way to 
>> compare it to other antennas you have no way to measure its performance.
>>
>> John KK9A
>>
>>
>>
>> To:    towertalk at contesting.com
>> Subject:    Re: [TowerTalk] Mosley Antenna Question
>> From:    Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com>
>> Reply-to:    jim at audiosystemsgroup.com
>> Date:    Wed, 18 Feb 2015 09:44:52 -0800
>>
>>
>> On Tue,2/17/2015 3:06 PM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>> K7LXC will not "talk his book" but I will say that multiple unbiased 
>> antenna range tests - including those reported in the K7LXC/N0AX 
>> "Tribander Test Reports" - have shown that the Mosley antennas 
>> perform more poorly than any other manufacturer's multiband yagis of 
>> similar boom lengths.
>>
>> It's a bit of a stretch to call it a "book" -- it's a well-written, 
>> well-documented engineering report on the well-planned and 
>> well-executed antenna measurements that Steve and Ward did something 
>> like 12-15 years ago. This report, another on companion tests on HF 
>> verticals, and N6BT's "Array of Light" book are all available from 
>> Steve's Champion Radio website, and all are worth far more than what you pay for them.
>>
>> The N6BT book is really about antenna design, discusses the designs 
>> of his Force 12 antennas, and includes designs for a nice variety of 
>> HF antennas.
>> The only thing it lacks is an editor -- several chapters are redundant.
>> One of the chapters debunks the inflated gain claims of antenna 
>> manufacturers, showing that the advertised gain numbers for their 
>> tri-banders were 3-6 dB greater than the maximum possible gain for a 
>> monoband Yagi of comparable size.
>>
>> 73, Jim K9YC
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
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------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 08:53:16 -0800
From: "Jim Thomson" <jim.thom at telus.net>
To: <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Mosley..again.
Message-ID: <6B065348F7264E469BC52DACB6A433AD at JimPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Since the 70s,  at least a dozen times we have helped swap a Mosely TA-33 jr to
something else, usually a Hy-gain 204BA.   The difference on 20m is the 
usual 10 db.
Think about it, 12 times that has been done locally.  The former mosely owners said the reason they bought the mosely ta-33 jr was  everything from  super high gain figures,  superb FB, superb FS, low cost, light in weight, cheap to buy, simple rotor, only one coax, no balun required  and most of them...including the local radio inspector at the time,  bought the 33jr...cuz of its outstanding swr curves !!

The problem with traps is they always put the 10 and 15m traps in the same casing..nose to tail.
On 10m it?s a 10m trap.  On 15M, the  10m trap is now a loading coil on 15m. 
problem is that 15m
loading coil is at the end of the 10m ele.  If ur gonna build a shortened 15m tapped, monoband yagi, and used coils, you would not place the coils more than  half way out each 
ele half.   On 20m,
the 10 and 15m traps are now loading coils for 20m.

The only way the swr ends up flat on all 3 bands is cuz of a trap fudge. 
the feedpoint Z is obviously
way less than 50 ohms on both 20 + 15m.  But with the trap losses thrown into the mix, the feedpoint
Z ends up closer to 50 ohms... and presto, flat swr.   Several local folks 
had the infamous wilson
system 1 back in the day..trapped tribander.  It used a hairpin match.   Now 
someone explain to me how the hell  you
can make a hairpin match work on 3 bands ???

A fellow 140 miles north of me installed a Mosely PRO-96.   What a gong 
show, and then some.   I looked at the
PRO-96 myself, years ago.  After talking to Mosely reps at the factory, I find out its really only good for 600W on rtty..and that?s only in the middle of each band, where swr is flat. 
They said NOT to run 1.5 kw rtty into it, on any band = kablamo.

Some trapped yagis  have worked fairly well for a lot of folks.   The 
problems  start after a few years..and the
coil connections at each end of each trap start to deteriorate.   Then the 
losses increase even more, meanwhile
its has same or better swr, good fb and good fs.   Local friend has the big 
trapped tribander..up 80 ft.   I could literally
talk right over top of him on 20m, with my f-12  5-el 20m, monoband yagi up 
40 ft.   That?s into EU  from the west coast.

Another local fellow had the big 6 el telrex 20m monoband yagi  up 80 ft. 
After 10 yrs of use, he swapped to the big
telrex triband trapped yagi.   He gained 2 bands, but was no longer the 
kingpin on 20m, he lost a carefully measured 6db.

Fact is a simple F-12 C3, with only 2 els per band will out do most trapped 
yagis.   trapped yagis provided 3 bands..and 5 bands
with later models..which is a lot more bands than any 204BA.   Trapped yagis 
provide for several bands with just one yagi.
These days  you can get  6 bands with one ant..and no traps.   F12  5BA for 
example.  Or the 40-10m f-12 ants.  or any of the
optibeam yagis.   IMO, it would really be silly to spend $$  on trapped 
yagis in 2015,  esp when they can easily be out performed.

Jim   VE7RF

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