[TenTec] Low-Power Tuner

[Steve Berg]

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 at contesting.com [mailto:tentec-bounces at 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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