[Amps] Recommended Tuner for Clipperton L

[peter chadwick]

When one is talking of a home station where the situation is relatively stable, it is now not difficult to measure the antenna feed impedance, and then design/build a tuner to allow matching. For an open wire feed, the old ARRL handbooks with the parallel or series tuned circuits do the job of a balun while for a single wire, an L network in one of its possible forms will do. You can even have  a separate tuner for each band.....Big HV high current switches ex BC375 Tuning Units are cheap enough at Fair Radio.

Admittedly, 160 can be a problem: my folded unipole when top loaded with a 205BA and a CueDee 4 ele for 10 interlaced with 4 ele for 15 allowed me to just adjust the tuning cap in the L across all of 160 and 80, which the 4 ele Steppir doesn't - that needs both L and C adjusted over each band and still has a high Q on 160 - as the wind blows, the wires feeding the unipole move and SWR wags around. But still, a home brew unit is MUCH cheaper if you go to flea markets - although I did spend $75 on a 500pF 7500volt vacuum cap for the tuner for the vertical.

I find the biggest problem is getting the low rpm DC motors for remote tuning......have to go to stepper motors.

73

Peter G3RZP