MFJ in partnership with InnovAntennas and G0KSC

At work we have 10 VNA's including SD Copper Mountain units; Agilent; Anritsu. But we also use SWR analyzers additionally for some outdoor measurements, and these include 1 Comet 500, and several MFJ analyzers.

They have been trouble free.

73
Chip W1YW

 

I agree Justin's antennas work great and are made very well.

 

Carl WHo?

This person made an accusation that MFJ tuners, at least in the past, catch on fire. Does anyone have documented evidence of (older) MFJ tuners catching on fire--when used with legal power of lower?

It is, of course, possible to cause arcing hotspots in FR4 coil cores that will produce a small bit of smoke, when the tuners are improperly used--this happened on a Heath tuner.

But actual fire on older MFJ's...'nada' info from a Google search.

This is a damning assertion--is there any evidence for it? Probably more BS, like the myth of working DXCC with a light bulb....

 

I've been buying MFJ products since 1986 and have bought many many pieces of their gear. I always inspect the inside of whatever product I buy from them and have found an unsoldered or cold solder joint here a loose piece of hardware there but that's out of dozens of pieces of their gear. I've never had a product malfunction or failure.

Right now I have two MFJ-986 differential antenna tuners, one MFJ-974HB balanced antenna tuner, one MFJ-259C antenna analyzer and two Ameritron AL-80B amplifiers.

Recently I replaced one of the MFJ-986's with a Palstar AT2KD. I had to send the Palstar back as the band switch was wired incorrectly! Normally I would have fixed it myself but as it was brand new and under warranty I sent it back.

And I replaced the MFJ-974HB with a Palstar BT-1500A balanced antenna tuner and found out quickly that the 974HB has a much wider matching range than the BT-1500A.

Does MFJ have QC problems at times? Yes but it's improving. Does Palstar have QC problems sometimes? Yes sometimes, but so do other hamateur radio gear manufacturers.

In the past I've also owned an Ameritron 811 and 811H and had no problems, but I didn't over drive them either. They do over rate the power output of those amplifiers but common sense hamateur radio experience says to ignore that.

So my personal experience with MFJ has been good and I will continue to buy their products.

 

Oh and I forgot about the MFJ-939I auto tuner that I own and it really has a huge matching range. And I also own two Ameritron ARB-704 amp interface's that works perfectly, as well as an MFJ-1707 receive antenna switch and and two MFJ-1025 antenna noise cancelers.

The MFJ-1025 works really well, you just have to take the time to learn how to use it.

 

Yeh, the MFJ-1025 is FB, sorry I sold one.

 

OMG you sucked me right in! I've finally stopped laughing long enough to post a big THANK YOU!!!!!!

73 de Jim, N2EY

 

Some of us still homebrew all sorts of stuff.

So do I - but their quality has to improve.

What would be really good is if they offered some of their stuff as kits.

 

Thank you for all the support, in particular Chip, W1YW and Stewart, GM0GTU.

There is one important attribute which is perhaps not clear. InnovAntennas will continue to make the 'Pro-line' of hand-made antennas in the UK. we simply cannot keep up with demand of the smaller antennas nor can we cater for the 'your antennas are too expensive for me' without a mass production environment. MFJ provides the cost effective manufacture route based upon the proven Cushcraft and Hy-Gain mechanical structures so a win-win results.

I spent a great deal of time with Randy Nash, one of the MFJ engineers in Starkville last summer building and testing designs from HF through to 440MHz in order to ready them and Martin Jue took a personal interest in the project and ensures the build proceedures will be followed. For the consumer this means there are now two options, wait around for the more expensive, individually hand-built versions from the UK or take the mass produced and cheaper version off of the shelf of virtually any Ham Store you can find anywhere.

Now any ham can have a high performance, low noise Yagi on a mechanical platform of their choice. that has to be good right?

Justin G0KSC

 

This isn't about ragging on MFJ nor is about how many pieces of MFJ equipment we have.
So, back to the topic at hand. I think the merger between MFJ and Innovantennas is a win-win for both and a win for us.

 

Best of luck Justin
CU at Dayton.

73,
Chip W1YW

 

Youre the one with the Piled Higher and Deeper Shorty so do a search of the QST Archives if its not too difficult to understand.
Failing that try the telephone

 

Justin's antenna's r great we have the 5element lfa for 10meters and also he designed us an interlaced 15/20 meter beam and once we put it togther we stuck it in the air and didnt have to adjust anything and it rockets out. Thanks justin and good luck from the guy's from vk2ggc.

 

Gentlemen:

The problem is, too many of us have been taken advantage of by MFJ's substandard design and assembly quality - so many that the review forums are loaded with negative comments and even the positive ones usually start with a disclaimer similar to: "When I received the (product) it turned out XYZ was loose, unsoldered, missing or uncalibrated, but after troubleshooting and repairing the (product) myself, with a sympathetic ear from MFJ it worked OK."

For my part, I've purchased a number of MFJ products and more than 50% had serious design or quality issues right out of the box. And my amateur associates have had similar experiences. We would be dissing MFJ if this were NOT true, and frankly most of us wish MFJ really would clean up its act, even if this means reducing its product spread. After all, who needs six different types of 1KW tube linears, just to showcase a different tube/ This type of resource diluting self-competition is rampant in the MFJ product line and may be the single biggest reason MFJ has serious product issues. But not always. And yet, here they are, adding yet more diversity to their already chaotic product line, before addressing fundamental product quality and consistency issues. Hence, the negative responses to this thread.

My biggest loss taken on an MFJ product (about $900 with tax - a LOT to most hams) was a "Cushcraft" A3S with A-743 40M expansion. This is a product that never worked correctly and never could, by (revised) design. I had been using a pre-MFJ A3S for two decades before I decided to replace it with a newer version, due to advanced corrosion in the older one (I live near the sea and our air is not kind to most metals). The older had A3S worked very well when it was younger. But I began to notice elements of the new A3S "dog-legging" at the traps on each element and experienced frequent SWR jumps when operating. Pulling down the affected element sections and disassembling the traps where the dog-leg bends were obvious showed just why the bending/SWR jump problem was happening. The new A3S trap design uses an unreinforced and flexible plastic coil form, thinned and tabbed at the ends, in the center of the trap, that bears significant bending loads from gravity, wind and rotation. This load-bearing coil form tends to soften on a hot day and bend even more. New windings are uncoated bare aluminum wire. Some of the traps even shorted out, center coil to capacitive sleeve, due to bending caused by this design defect. Comparing the construction of the older A3S traps with the new ones, I discovered the old traps used conformal coated windings over a very rigid fiberglass coil form that stayed at full thickness for its entire length. Where I could easily bend the new traps over my knee, the old traps resisted bending, hence no doglegging and no SWR jumps. I worked with MFJ to solve this problem over a period of months (and beyond the warranty period) and they sent me new traps of the same defective design with the same problem. Finally, in desperation, MFJ tried adding more spacers to the traps to transfer bending moment to the outer capacitance sleeve and improve their strength. However, MFJ did not compensate for the dielectric constant change this insertion of spacers caused when tuning the traps, which detuned them, nor did they secure the spacers in-place, resulting in them "floating" out of position and the trap bending anyway. After this experience, I secured the spacers in place myself and compensated as best I could for the detuned traps. After a time, the traps bent again - the outer sleeves were never really meant to be load bearing in the first place. So after a year of trying to get this pile of junk to work, I gave up and installed a Mosley TA-33-MW and have had no problems with it. I wish MFJ would have at least offered a refund for this unworkable antenna design - but that has yet to happen. And since others have posted about this problem and since the A4S and even some of their verticals use the problematic new trap design, I imagine acknowledging this serious design flaw could cause substantial financial liability for MFJ. But they could at least change the darn trap design to something workable on newly shipping product, and it would be even nicer if MFJ would offer a retrofit kit with a revised, workable trap design to existing customers. But this bit of responsibility to the user community has yet to happen, as far as I know. Should you doubt this story, please feel free to contact me and we can arrange a visit where I will show you in person the differences in trap design and demonstrate the "bendy effect". It will be immediately obvious why there is a problem. Given other online posts on this topic, this post, and the records of our interchanges (I have them, too), it is pretty hard for MFJ to claim they know nothing of the design flaw. Yet they still seem to be selling this known defective product.

So, for those of you who claim never to have had a problem with MFJ products, in design, or production, you either have never used a significant number of "new" MFJ products, or are very, very lucky. I have not been that fortunate, and could go on about MFI-269C problems (knobs disintegrating, rechargeable batteries DOA, built-in charger incapable of charging ANY battery, or MFJ-201 issues ( a dip meter that does not dip), ammeter issues, etc., but this post is long enough already.

I believe there were implied requests for a sincere and detailed response on this topic, so here you go.

Best Regards,

Brian - K6BRN

 

Quake