Re: [TenTec] Hi power Ten Tec ant tuner swr drift?

["denton" <denton@oregontrail.net>]

Very good Al..I am the originial poster..
I was merely inquireing as to why one L network would have swr drift while 
another later model L network would not under some circumstances.
I will query Ten Tec next week and see if I can either purchase or secure 
the hf fixed caps they use in their current L network.
Whenever I am experimenting with antennas that are fed with twin lead, I 
will dig up my old Johnson Matchboxes to use for a reference...that and a 
field strength meter, some on the air reports and just plain feeling the 
components after transmitting a bit. That and an antenna modeling program is 
what I have to work with.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <al_lorona@agilent.com>
To: <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 3:30 PM
Subject: RE: [TenTec] Hi power Ten Tec ant tuner swr drift?


> The feed impedance of that short antenna is much too low. You
> are going to
> melt down your tuner. Any tuner will get hot and consume a
> large percentage
> of your RF power when attempting to match such a low Z.
> Steve N4LQ

No, not necessarily true. Normally a blanket statement like this wouldn't 
bother me at all, but to say that "Any tuner will get hot and consume a 
large percentage of your RF power" demands a little bit more engineering and 
mathematical rigor in its defense.

We can, for example, take a link-coupled tuner with large components of 
sufficiently high Q (air variables and large diameter, large gauge coil) 
that would have very little loss, simply because there are predominantly 
reactances in the circuit, which dissipate no heat. Many such tuners are in 
use all over the place, happily matching short antennas at low frequencies 
with very little power loss.

Of course, for the vast majority of tuners out there, including and 
especially the automatic tuners that are especially in vogue (re: November 
QST Short Takes product review) nowadays this statement is, unfortunately, 
absolutely correct.

Eliminate the baluns and toroidal coils and small capacitors and 
insufficient inductors, and the problem of matching a very low impedance 
goes away completely.

The efficiency of the antenna itself (as compared to, say, a half-wave 
dipole) and ground losses are other topics that we can deal with separately.

To the original poster of the question: The SWR drift you are seeing is a 
result of the components in your tuner heating up. You need a different 
tuner architecture to handle the low impedance presented by your antenna. 
Discontinue use of any tuners with toroidal baluns immediately.

Al W6LX


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