Has anyone on the list had any experience with this QRP automatic tuner?
or with the “QRPver” company themselves (himself)?
Strange that they call the unit ATU-100 when it’s a 25watt unit.
73 Ed.
The things I’d want to know:
Does it use latching relays? The Eleccraft T1 does and that means once it has tuned, no power is needed by the tuner to keep the selected coils and caps. If it doesn’t, you’ll need an extra 150mA of supply when out portable.
The demo video shows it matching assorted resistances, XR+0j impedances but doesn’t show reactive loads being matched. Seems a little odd not to show it doing real world matching… i.e. matching for 30m on a 20m dipole.
Hi Andy
Sadly it does not use latching relays, unlike the LDG Z817 ATU.
Ed it will take 50 w but no more than 8 for tuning. Maybe the marketing dept liked 100 more than 50.
The Z817 is OK to 20 W and there was a Z817H which handled 50 w.
The ATU100 seems to be happy with a 2.8 :1 tuned SWR. It also has a higher range R preference suggesting it is an L network.
My Z817 does a fine job.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Thanks Ron, Thanks Andy,
I had my suspicions about this unit. At $100 plus shipping is not THAT much cheaper than an Elecraft or LDG AutoATU. I’m probably better picking up a second hand one of those than a new one of these.
73 Ed.
Jack GM4COX has used an Elecraft T1 for many years on his SOTA activations. It only has 20W handling though and that may be a limit.
My SOTA portable rig now is the X108G 20w rig - so the Elecraft would suffice.
73 Ed.