My opinions:
All-band antenna tuners make a set of compromises to produce a tuner that
fits in one box.
They may not be able to handle legal limit on RTTY. Or legal limits CW/SSB
on other bands, especially the "extreme bands" of 10M and 160M.
They often have 10-turn (or more-turn) roller inductors that make it very
slow - acutally, downright painful - to QSY between bands.
They usually have very limited choice of tuner topologies, or even worse,
they don't have the "right topology" for a given band/antenna combination.
If you have the space available in your shack and need a tuner for every
band, you want to have a tuner optimized for each band in the shack and
relay selection for tuners. Some pictures of my setup where I have taken
this to an extreme: http://www.trailing-edge.com/tuners.html
If your only problem is that your 160M antenna is narrow band and doesn't
cover both 1830kc and 1880kc and 1950kc, your best choice is to cut in (via
remote relays if you are into automation) some additional L and C at the
antenna base, as appropriate, to help you QSY between different parts of
160M. This will cost you way way less and be far more efficient, than
buying an all-band tuner in the shack.
Tim N3QE
On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 9:30 PM, Jim Murray via Topband <
topband@contesting.com> wrote:
> Hello all,Would you have any recommendations for antenna tuners? Have
> been looking at the automatics, Palstar, Mfj, LDG At-1000Proii etc.. Have
> been using an old Dentron which doesn't have very close markings on the
> dials and getting tired of turning and adjusting. Another option would be
> another manual such as the At2k with more precise settings. I do quite of
> bit of band hopping and even on 160 my Inv. L is perfect on 1.830 but
> doesn't like going very far either up or down, hence the need for a little
> tuner loss. The automatics look pretty appealing but would appreciate any
> opinions from the group.Thanks
> Jim/k2hn
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