Sorry Clayton, these tuners are NOT good for legal limit for "quite a
while" with the "stock" fixed capacitors. I've owned eight of these
tuners, and several of the fixed caps fried in nearly all of them. I'm a
contester, and had them set up so that they only worked one band (for
fast switching between bands). Only one of those tuners was ever used on
160M. The cap that ALWAYS fries is the one at the rear of the bandswitch.
When thinking about power ratings for these tuners, remember that their
original design was in the days when we were permitted 1,000W INPUT. I
suspect that the design might not have received a serious look after that.
I run a pair of K3s, each to an original Titan 425, never more than
1500W. When I fried the caps in these tuners, I was typically running
about 1200-1300 W. Most of my antennas are pretty well matched, nothing
worse than 3:1, most under 2:1.
73, Jim K9YC
On Wed,2/17/2016 5:25 PM, Clayton Brantley wrote:
Jim: The 229/238 will run at legal limit for quite a while on almost
all bands. The problem
rears it's head on 160 meters where you might run into some weird
mis-matches. At low
power it seems to work OK but at hight power, the .01 disc caps just
cannot handle the
current. I found some Russian caps for around $30 to replace the
stock caps. Now my
229A remains quite cool. I believe this thing will tune the
proverbial wet noodle in a copper
box! I have had several match boxes over the years and I will not
part with this one.
If you do not use 160 meters, then this mod is un-needed.
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