[Amps] Bliss Motarized High-Power Tuner

[Paul Christensen]

Some of you may know that John Bliss (W5EOE) manufactures a high-power (and hence the AMPS tie-in), motorized antenna tuner for balanced lines, but I thought some of you would be interesting in seeing a couple photos of a tuner that I had John make to my specifications.  What's somewhat unusual is that the wattmeter portion departs from that normally employed in most commercially-manufactured tuners:

http://216.229.20.37/images/Bliss-Tuner-1.jpg

Note that a dual Bird Thruline section is used to simultaneously monitor incident and reflected power.  The meters and Thruline section were cannibalized from a surplus Bird 4526 meter panel.  I wanted the ability to monitor both reads at once, but I detest the "ricey" look of cross-needle meters.  Here's a close-up image of the metering that shows the Bird name-plate added.

http://216.229.20.37/images/Bliss-Tuner-2.jpg

The remote balanced network uses a variation of the AG6K design, but a pair of Jennings RS-6 vacuum relays are used to form a quasi "knife switch" for the open line.  The open line vacuum relays are only energized when the tuner is powered.  Over the weekend, I'll try to take some internal pictures of RF network.

Disclaimer:  I am in no way affiliated with John Bliss, nor his company -- and this post is not meant to be a product review nor an advertisement for his products and services.  

Paul, W9AC