I recently purchased the "Electric Radio Antenna Tuning Meter" and have been
using it with my older TT rigs. I just wanted to pass along my
recommendations. For those not familiar with the meter, it's a small box
with 3 coax connectors. One goes to the rig, another to your tuner and the
last one goes to a 50 ohm dummy load. To tune up, flip the switch to "tune"
on the meter which connects your rig directly to the dummy load, key up the
rig for full power or less and adjust your tuner for a null on the gadget's
meter. When finished, flip the switch back to operate and you're done!
The advantages to this are:
1. You aren't QRMing anyone while tuning.
2. Your rig always sees 50 ohms so your finals are protected from those wide
impedance swings.
3. Your tuner has no power on it so you can crank the coil, flip the
switches at will with no worries about arcing or hurting the rig. You can
even change antennas with the key down.
I've been using this to match my inverted L to the Delta 580 and I get a
perfect match every time. I think every tuner should have one of these built
in. The circuit consist of only 6 resistors and a few bypass capacitors.
Look in QST for a short review. Obviously I'm impressed and it's good to see
another American manufacture with a useful, well constructed product.
Steve
N4LQ
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