[TowerTalk] Adjusting antenna tuners

n4kg at juno.com n4kg at juno.com
Wed Jan 29 16:19:41 EST 2003


I use 4 Johnson Matchboxes on various dipoles plus a couple
of Drake MN2000 tuners on coax fed antennas for 80 and 40M.

Here are 2 additional ways to tune antenna tuners:

1 - start on Receive and adjust for maximum signal or even atmospheric
noise

2 - I find the SWR cutback circuits in most solid state PA's very useful
     for tuner adjustment.  Just start tuning for Maximum Forward Power.
     This is MUCH faster than tuning for SWR (unless you use an automatic
      SWR meter) and can be done at reduced power levels.

Tom  N4KG

On Wed, 29 Jan  "Eric Scace  K3NA" <eric at K3NA.ORG> writes:
>    A very convenient way to adjust antenna tuners is to use a 
> handheld impedance analyzer as the signal source.  I happen to use 
> an
> AEA CIA-HF, which can graph the SWR across the band.  Not only can I 
> see how broad or narrow-banded the tuner's "solution" is, but I
> can also easily see which way things change when I turn the various 
> controls of C and L.  I tweak for the solution that gives the
> broadest, flattest match.
> 
>    Lastly, the signal level emitted by the analyzer is very low so 
> QRM on the bands is reduced.
> 
> -- Eric K3NA
> 
> 
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