Rick raises a very valid point. So, here is a description of my humble
setup.
My shack is in the downstairs of a hillside ranch house, built into a
hillside. The lot is small, and there is not really enough room to put
up any decent wire antennas. I am mainly on 6 and 2 meters, so I have a
tower up for those. The HF antenna is a Hy-Gain DX-88 trap vertical.
It is ground mounted on an aluminum post sunk into concrete. I have a
DX Engineering radial plate at the base with about 70 radials from 20 to
25 feet in length. I ran them all around the base, though the antenna
is blocked to the northwest, west, and southwest by my house and about
25 feet of hill. I am still amazed that I can work anything out in the
blocked directions. The feedline is about a hundred feet of RG-8 style
direct burial coax. I have several turns of coax at the base of the
antenna, and also where the coax goes into the crawl space under the
garage. In the shack, I normally run my Argonaut II, but occasionally
exercise my Corsair II or the Omni V.9. I used to run a tuner,
allegedly capable of 1500 watts from a prominent Mississippi
manufacturer. However, when I got my Centaur amplifier, I tried it and
at 400 Watts, the arcing pretty much destroyed the inductor switch.
Apparently I did not have enough capacity in the circuit. I replaced
the switch, but it is just not the same. So, being lazy, and figuring
that an L network tuner is about the most efficient around, I bought the
LDG. I tend to run QRP power levels due to my being in a TV fringe
area, and the houses in my subdivision are crammed in pretty tightly. I
am probably pushing my luck with 25 watts on 6 meters. So, the
amplifiers are on the shelf until I can move north to my Wisconsin
property in a few years.
I have not made any power measurements to see what sorts of losses the
tuner has. Even with 5 watts, I have worked quite a few stations in
Europe and South America on the HF bands. I mostly work CW, and that
helps a lot.
The LDG tuner has two full scale settings for its power meter function:
60 watts and 600 watts. I have not tried it with the amp, yet. But it
works well with the Argonaut II.
I hope this helps.
Steve WA9JML
On 9/9/2011 6:11 PM, Rick - DJ0IP / NJ0IP wrote:
Joe, please be careful.
Several people answered you and none of them were wrong, but... perhaps none
of them were right.
Your message is similar to "I'm in the market for a car; what do you
recommend?"
The first guy recommends a Chrysler Voyager because he has a family with a
lot of kids.
The next guy recommends a Corvette because he is single and has no kids.
The next guy recommends a Hybrid because he happens to believe in saving
energy.
There are probably 10 good answers to your email request.
Even though they are "good", 9 may be wrong.
I personally have 6 matchboxes.
A couple I keep for sentimental reasons, simply because I have had them for
40 years.
The others are from different manufacturers and are completely different
from each other.
I use them for different applications.
If you ask me, which of my matchboxes is the best, I can only honestly
answer, "all of them".
Each has its place in my operations.
You need to describe at least a little, what your requirements are.
What power level do you run (100w or 1KW?)
What kind of antennas do you have, and do you plan to have?
Do you want to have the lazy fully automatic solution or are you willing to
adjust a manual matchbox.
(Mind you, for many applications this makes no difference, but for some,
such as matching open wire fed antennas, it makes a difference).
Once you tell us that, we can start to make intelligent recommendations.
Until you tell us that, EVERY recommendation is just speculation, or worse
yet, FLUF.
73
Rick, DJ0IP
-----Original Message-----
From: tentec-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com]
On Behalf Of Joe
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 10:38 PM
To: TenTec Discussion
Subject: [TenTec] Low-Power Tuner
I would like recommendations for a 200 watt or so tuner. Does anyone have
something for sale.
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