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Junior Member
 
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Monday, September 06, 2010 3:50 AM
Posts: 10,
Visits: 11
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I purchased the internal antenna tuner with the 5000A. I have been through several Power SDR upgrades. Today the tuner does not pull in even a 50 ohm antenna to 1.0:1. The best it does is 1.3:1 even when the threshold is set at 1.1:1. The tuner shuts off and says the tune was successful. I sometimes run through tuning several times to get it even below 2.0:1. On antennas with 3.0:1 VSWR it often can not pull it in or stops at 2.6:1 VSWR. Am I doing something wrong or is the algorithm messed up?
Also the tuner is extremely noisy. My wife hears it over the TV in a room 30 feet away.
Bill
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Forum Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Thursday, March 03, 2011 6:51 PM
Posts: 33,
Visits: 143
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I feel your pain.
Actually I use a Palstar ATAUTO antenna tuner.
But my Flex has the internal tuner - once in a while I give the internal tuner a try.
The Pretty Betty SVN code has some major improvements in the ATU function.
It isn't perfect, but it works much better now - I'd say it is definitely usable.
Still, my Palstar tuner has much broader tuning capabilities than the Flex internal tuner made by LDG. But this was a design decision by LDG as to how much inductance and capacitance the tuner can deal with.
In addition, the Palstar tuner gets my SWR within 1.05 : 1 because it has stepper motors and can add/subtract small quantities of inductance and/or capacitance to get the SWR close to perfect. The LDG relay tuners use relays - and do not have enough relays to be able to add/subtract small quantities of inductance. I think the best I ever get from an LDG is 1.3 : 1 , and on many frequencies the LDG tuner can't tune it at all - where the Palstar gets a near perfect match.
Howard
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