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Reviews For: MFJ-1524 2 meter/70 cm base antenna

Category: Antennas: VHF/UHF+ Omnidirectional: verticals, mobile, etc

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Review Summary For : MFJ-1524 2 meter/70 cm base antenna
Reviews: 5MSRP: 119.95
Description:
Pulsar Hyper MightyGain
dual band 144/440 MHz base/repeater antenna
fiberglass
10 feet 6.5db gain on 2 meters / 9db gain on 70 cm
comes in two sections
so-239 connector
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/products.php?prodid=MFJ-1524
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0052.6
N3SDO Rating: 2008-05-05
Intermittent Bad Soldering!!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
It worked occasionally. It had problems from the day I bought it, 2 calls to MFJ, they suggested I try resoldering the joints. I have a big honking stained glass soldering iron, lots of mass and very hot! I reflowed every joint I found. Still no good. 2 years later I gutted it, and reused the radome for a home brew ant. Sunday afternoon while cleaning up the basement workbench, I gathered up the 1524 pieces, and ripped off the foam spacers. Under the foam was another bad joint. May have been the original culprit. No-never-mind, its spare parts now!
DT593 Rating: 2003-03-22
Get A Kid To Do It Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've had mine for a while but reading these reviews brought back memories of when I bought it.
I was recovering from arm/hand surgery so really couldn't do much with my hands as far as fighting with un-cooperative antenna assembly. I was sitting at my picnic table with my 11 year old grandaughter who was watching my antics out of the corner of her eye. I looked in the packaging for instructions...inside the fiberglass tube...on the ground...inside the glove compartment etc.etc etc..no instructions were found. I could see brass / copper rods & other parts down inside the radome but there was no way I could reach them with bandages on my fingers. I got up to get a pair of needle nose pliers out of the garage and could hear rattling coming from the area back near the picnic table. My grand daughter felt sorry for her dim whitted grandpa and there were the parts I had just wasted a half hour trying to access fully exposed and ready to be tightened. I told her this was great but I had a step that needed to be done before the step we were at during this point. I explained what I needed to get to them and she then sorta "shook" the thing and did a little dance and presto there were the other parts I needed to see. Her friend showed up at about this point , she was NOT happy ubout waiting around for us to finish such a meaningless matter so I rushed the tightning of "this and that" and handed the antenna back to my Grandaughter....a little more "shakin" and "dancin" and presto the bottom section containing the internal rods was magically exposed. I tightened it all up she did one final "wiggle" and "shaking" of the fiberglass tube..I did the final tightning and "PRESTO" it was done. I checked it out on my anylizer and the swr was off a bit up on 155 mhz where I wanted it to resonate. By know my grandaughter and her friend had left,,, giggling at my incompitence all the way down the driveway. I didnt have the heart or the nerve to ask her to use her magic again to dis-assemble it in order make final swr adjustments so had my son stick it up on the roof "as-is". Its been up there ever since working just fine. I know I had a problem with it myself but it is obvious that I was doing something wrong. For those of you who run into this "unsolvable" problem as I and others have come up against when putting one of these things together just call your Grandaughter or Baby Sitter or any girl under the age of about 12 years old...give her 5 bucks...leave her alone and comeback 10 minutes later to find your antenna fully assembled.....properly.
Bear
Western NY
AG4QE Rating: 2002-04-09
I replaced it Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I agree that this thing needed some simple instructions. I ended up pulling out the entire upper element. There was one flimsy little piece in there which appears to fold over when reassembling it and the SWR for the 440 is prohibitive. Numerous emails to the vendor I bought it from and MFJ were blown off. Finally the vendor said he would contact MFJ...after over a year, I'm still waiting. I put up a diamond instead and am quite pleased...but they could almost be the same antenna.
N9LIG Rating: 2002-01-13
Works Great Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
My antenna works great.I have owned Comet and Diamond antennas and this works as well as they did.I think its a good value for the money.It is put together very much like the Diamond or Comet.
Very good TX and RX into distant reapeaters.Also works very well on simplex.
73
N9LIG
KC8RAJ Rating: 2001-04-19
cheap Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
this antenna is junk, when I first got it I had trouble getting it put together. there are two pieces...the bottom and top....you have to join the the two copper rods together and then use the set screw to lock them together....anyway I couldn't figure out how to join them at first...turns out you need to reach down inside the fiberglass tube and grab the element with a long needle nose plier or something similiar....mfj should at least included instructions with the antenna. a person can easily break this antenna if you dont know what your doing.

now onto performance.....magnet mounts do better than this....using high quality coax and having it up about 30 ft. it does very poorly on the tx side...i have lots of trouble hitting repeaters that are within 15-20 miles of me...rx is ok, but could be better!
the only thing good i could say for it is, it would make a good portable antenna for hamfests, field day ect.
this antenna is not worth the 80.00+ dollars I paid for it.

spend your money on diamond x-50 or on a small yagi...you'll be happier