[CQ-Contest] AutoTune Amps

[Charley Schwartz]

For years I used single band amps and tracked them to the transciever's CAT 
port which made for instant band changed. I purchased a Yaesu Quadra for the 
50 MHZ capability and found this to actually acts as a "present" amp once the 
memories were programmed for the various band/antenna combinations. This makes 
for instant band changes.

A couple surplus amps that I have had which were "auto tune" were far too slow 
for instant QSY and also had considerably variable search / tune times which 
made band changes take up to a minute, not too favorable for the contesting.

The single band amps (mine were actually seperate commercial multiband amps 
tuned to a single band) offer the backup if one amp fails. My switching matrix 
allowed any of six amplifiers on any on nine bands and any of twelve antenna 
ports to be sued on any band.

One real advantage of the automatic band selection is the elimination of the 
"Zap Poof" results of the wrong antenna / wrong amplifier tune when one is 
tired in a contest.

73 de Charley W1TE

>===== Original Message From ve3pn at igs.net =====
>Hi All
>
>I agree with an Autotune amp it likely not quick enough (if its motor
>driven), but with a preset amp using relays or actuators with about 100mSec
>total switching time i.e. disable Amp TX , enable band change , do band
>change, enable Amp Tx Low power ,check VSWR, enable QRO Tx). . It is
>feasible (my own preset amp has been going for 20 years) , however it's very
>loud! when changing bands as in keeerchunkkkkk.
>
>
>Peter
>
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