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I refuse to publicly comment about the patent issue and Bencher so graciously pulling their SkyHawk product temporarily off the market as that is an ongoing legal issue and public discussion is futile and inappropriate. The public is unaware of the issues involved and assumptions and grand statements about this matter are founded in half truths and self serving conjecture. Messer's Locher and Schiller will certainly find ultimate resolution . Suggest you consider the following: ----- Original Message ----- From: <KI7WX@aol.com> To: <towertalk@contesting.com> Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2000 9:04 AM Subject: Re: Fw: Re: [TowerTalk] News from Bencher > > >I believe the recent trend towards more truthful gain claims from Cushcraft > and possibly others, >is a direct result of Force 12 and M2 being there. > > I think this is much too generous a statement. IMHO what forced antenna > companies to make less exaggerated statements about gain is the easy > availability of good computer modeling which can be run on the average ham's > desktop computer. But Mark, how can this be, as the very programs developed by those gentlemen were the same ones used to develop the F12 line. They (YO, NEC. Elnec, and others) were available to anyone who wanted them even way back then. Only thing really new is "front ends" and the release of NEC IV by the government. Yes, computers have become faster and storage cheaper, but we did get the job done in 1990. Other antenna companies were forced to "re-evaluate" their claims because it was difficult to reconcile their inflated gains to actual performance when compared to our products which claimed vastly less gain. Furthermore, it was our marketing and our participation in reflectors such as this one that helped make the ham public aware of real gain possibilities. The testing done two years ago by Ward Silver and Steve Morris portrayed the reality of trapped designs who had little or no gain compared to a dipole. Unfortunately some of the major players still have on their websites (this very morning) inflated gain claims just as they did 10 years ago. Suggest you compare a Mosley 1990 catalog to what is on the web site today. So I guess we, Force 12, still need to educate the general community as to the veracity of ad gain claims and performance. If we, or someone else had not done what we did when we did it, we might still be buying antennas that purposively give us 13 dBd gain for three elements on a 30 foot boom OR gains that far exceed the theoretical maximum. But we did provide a product that could back up its gain claims with silicon evaluation as well as field performance. Brian, Lew, Roy and others deserve much credit for that. > Although we all recognize that the predictions are not necessarily what you > get in the real world, Thank you for making a comment that refers to "we all" as I must inform you that ALL hams don't share your opinion. In fact, MOST of US think modeling as an extremely accurate way of predicting antenna performance. In fact the government thinks it very accurate indeed. A whole industry, including your friends you mentioned, think its accuracy is meaningful! the ability to compare antennas under the same > conditions in silico provide a decent idea of what will happen and that has > been a wonderful addition to our station building endeavors. > > The next step in the right direction is for antenna companies to make their > models freely available to anyone that wants to use them for comparison > purposes. Hy-Gain did this years ago Well, Mike, I suggest you look at the difficulties in accurately modeling trapped antennas. L.B. Cebik has some good information about just how difficult this is. HyGain choose to make various generous assumptions about the "Q" of the traps and therefore those models were of dubious value. Free dissemination of inaccurate modeling files is hardly a bargain. Congratulations to Mike Stahl for sending you the files you needed to make comparisons. How did those comparisons turn out? Are you willing to guarantee that every antenna modeling file will be used for "comparison only." We have had our intellectual property posted to this very reflector and we have two companies in Europe now making our products without license. It would be irresponsible for us to blindly provide our antenna files to anyone who wants them. Our experience has taught us that not all requests for our intellectual property are righteous. You tell me how to protect our product designs and I'll be more amenable to supplying those files. Our policy concerning the dissemination of our files is that Tom or I will make a determination on a case by case basis when asked for a file. I do not usually decline file requests without good reason. and Mike at M2 has sent me every model > I've ever asked him for. Others have been less helpful. Just how > > >Force 12 has obviously stimulated competition in the marketplace. We all > benefited! > > You might want to check with the guys that were at Dayton talking about 80M > beams or others that spent their youth trying to tune a 40M section of a C4 > tribander before you get too carried away with the "all" part....:-) Yes, I would like to know more about that too. As far as tuning the C4, I'll let owners speak to that as I do know that if the product is built correctly and installed correctly, it works just as we said it would. A manufacture of a 40 or 80 meter design is faced with the reality of an antenna usually mounted close to the ground in terms of wavelength. Any antenna close to the ground is affected by factors such as the ground, nearby objects including structures, and of course by other nearby antennas. Instead of introducing loss to hide interaction, we offer adjustment to those products. Furthermore we provide vast on line and in house support for installation issues. I'm aware also of the recent 80 meter newsgroup issues with our designs. If we thought using a coil in the design as opposed to the CIC loading was a better way of doing things, we would have done it that way. Tuning a multi-element array on 80 meters is a challenge for the manufacturer and for the users as frequency excursions change the character of parasitic elements. We will continue to assist any customer who asks and from my own view, no other major company provides the level of tech support we do. > > More seriously, from my biased perspective of life I'm not sure we've all > benefited from what has happened in the antenna marketplace over the last few > years. There are fewer choices today for commercial antennas than there were > when I first became interested in station building, there is a smaller > selection of HF antennas for the serious dude, and prices are on the rise. Mark, what are you talking about? We have today more choices than ever. I think we make serious antennas as our C31XR or our 7 el 20 on a 58' foot boom are pretty "serious" choices. We have 83 designs listed in our newest catalog along with another 52 designs we still make. We are about to introduce 4 completely new designs. CushCraft offers new triband designs in their X9 and X7 series along with other innovative new designs. F12, CushCraft, M2, Mosley and Cal Av offer monoband designs and Mike Stahl just redid his KT34XA into a KT36XA. We as a community have never had so many choices. Are you pining for the products of DX Engineering, Gotham or what? Prices rise because of material costs, not because of margin demands. We did not have a price increase for two years even though all manufacturing and materials costs were increasing. If a business serving a small market is to survive, those rising costs must be passed on to the consumer. If you feel commercial products are too expensive, build your own! Spend the $$$ for software or go buy a modeling range instead. Get educated in the software's use and install it on a fast computer. Don't forget software to analyses the mechanical design too. Develop your own boom to mast mechanics along with the element to boom mechanics. Determine the correct alloys of tubing to use and of course use the right taper algorithm Then call up Texas Towers and buy the tubing you need to do the project. Finally, when you assemble and install your antenna, just call yourself for technical support! We will in the meantime continue to introduce new designs for the marketplace using ad claims that are repeatedly verifiable. We will address any instance where our amateur or commercial patents are challenged through design or use. And we will continue to provide support for our products by qualified active hams that use what we design 73 to "all." Natan W6XR/2 FORCE 12 East Ithaca, NY force12@qth.com > would certainly agree that in the small tribander world F12 has done a very > good job of providing products that people want and that is great too. > > Cheers, > > Mark > KI7WX > > > -- > FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/FAQ/towertalk > Submissions: towertalk@contesting.com > Administrative requests: towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com > Problems: owner-towertalk@contesting.com > -------------------------------------------- Force12Talk mailing list provided as a service by Force 12 Antennas, Inc. 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