(My turn)
There is no right or wrong answer here.
It's a matter of tastes and preferences.
I ordered my ORION without the tuner for the reasons Buck stated.
I also plan to keep it home and not use it as a portable rig.
If I were going to use it as such, I probably would have ordered
the tuner.
One common use here is Germany is to connect a 4:1 balun to the
tuner and then feed an open-wire-fed dipole. Our field day rules
only allow us to have one antenna with only one mast. By careful
choice of dipole length and feeder length, we're able to cover
all bands using the built-in tuner on most Japanese rigs. For
160m we have to drop the ends of the dipole and jumper extensions
to it.
If I ever change my mind and do this (portable), then I'll use an
external tuner. I have plenty of those already. I also prefer a
true symmetrical coupler in this case. However I can see where
many ops would want to have this additional operational feature
available (built-in, without having to carry additional boxes).
Again, it's "Horses for courses".
73
Rick
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