Re: AT-600 minimum power to tune
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Re: AT-600 minimum power to tune
My AT-600Pro does.
73,
Ed - ad7gr
On 12/9/2022 10:08 AM, Tim K4SHF wrote:
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Will the AT-600
autotune with an input of 5 watts?
I'd like to use it with a QRP rig...
73? Tim? K4SHF
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AT-600 minimum power to tune
Will the AT-600 autotune with an input of 5 watts?
I'd like to use it with a QRP rig...
73? Tim? K4SHF
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Here is an old friend!?
73 k7mhi
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Re: AT-1000ProII Auto High/Low Relay Adjustment Fail 3.5 MHz to 4.0 MHz
On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 02:29 PM, cbrabandt wrote:
fails to tune as accurately as my Z100-A, it usually brings the SWR down below 2:1 without the need to manually push the L or C buttons (which can often further reduce the SWR by a good margin). However, I just ran into a situation where my 1000ProII completely fails to obtain an acceptable sub-2:1 tune (even when the 1.7:1 max option is set). After recently changing the connectivity to my 80m OCFD antenna, I am forcing "full" tunes ("long" button press) to re-populate the tuner memory with valid settings, but the SWR in low 80m is usually now worse than the bypass SWR!
have you checked all the relays ? I had a blown contact into one of the relays and it was never able to obtain the proper loading obviously but only on certain band and frequencies... replaced the relay and problem solve for me.
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Re: LDG products and specs?
Jay,
I have my ground lug well connected to the ground right outside my shack. Also, I have compared my Z100A and 1000ProII with the same ground cable and, in terms of auto operation, there's just no comparison--the Z100A wins hands-down! For sure, everyone's setup is different. As I mentioned, I don't care if my 1000ProII doesn't automatically tune the lowest possible match--it just needs to be under 2:1 for me but it's often over 2:1 until I manually tweak it and then store it for the future.
I'm running an 80m inverted 'V' OCFD peaked at about 45' above ground with a hybrid 4:1 Ruthroff / 1:1 Guanella balun up at the antenna feedpoint.
73
Cal? AD8Q
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Re: LDG products and specs?
Thanks, Morgan! That's very interesting.
Even at 100W using MFSK32, I've noticed that relaying an entire AmRRON AIB can cause my SWR to creep up near the end of the ~10 to 15 minute transmit. I suspected that it must be due to something heating up. At first I thought it might be the lightweight 1:1 Guanella choke that I made and put up on my 80m OCFD pole between the feed coax and the existing 4:1 Ruthroff balun, but perhaps it's my LDG AT-1000ProII, even though it is rated for 400W digital, which is much more than the 100W digital my IC-7100 puts out.
The other strange thing is the power meter on my 7100 LCD indicates that it starts to roll back power near the end too, but the 1000ProII LED meter, set for 100W scale, indicates no power reduction.
After a very brief cool-down, the normal SWR returns (down around 1.1:1 on both SWR meters). Maybe I'll use my VNA V2+4 to check the SWR at the coax input to my 1000ProII before and after a lengthy relay sometime. I'm not very motivated to go up on the snow-covered roof in winter weather to drop the antenna down and inspect the Guanella choke unless it fails! I'll try reducing power next time and see what happens, but many net participants are in the skip zone and power matters too.
73
Cal? AD8Q
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Re: How to remove the LDG-IC-PAC cable from an ICOM 7300
Larry,
I've used the yellow nylon body/door trim prying tools from Harbor Freight. As I recall, there's a place to wedge one of long "blade" ends and twist it to pop the shells apart. After I lubricated the shells with Frog Lube paste (use a Q-tip to apply the really slick water-based lube), the connectors become hand-removable after two or three prying sessions.
73
-Cal? AD8Q
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Re: How to remove the LDG-IC-PAC cable from an ICOM 7300
That connector is a real pain to remove. I've often had to use a small pliers or something. I finally gave up and just leave it connected to the radio. It's just a short cable and isn't really in the way for moving it from one place to the next. The radio with cable attached still fits in my transit case when needed. Though most of the time, I use small bungee cords to strap the tuner on top of the radio and move the whole thing as a package.
Michael WA7SKG
Larry Tusoni W6YH wrote on 12/7/22 4:09 PM:
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My 7300 works great with the LDG Z-11PROII tuner using the LDG-IC-PAC cable.
However, the cable is very difficult to remove from the 7300 and I am afraid to pull out the connector in the radio while trying to remove the cable.
Does anyone have any idea on how to easily remove it?
I will be using this radio and tuner at my portable location so will be setting it up quite a few times a year.
73,
Larry, W6YH
_._,_._,_
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Re: How to remove the LDG-IC-PAC cable from an ICOM 7300
Most of the time gentle rocking side to side while pulling the plug will do it. With? a new plug I've used a pair of small channel locks on the sides to ease it off. In between those two methods is the use of an offset screwdriver as a prying tool.
Mike N3PM
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Re: How to remove the LDG-IC-PAC cable from an ICOM 7300
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On Thu, Dec 8, 2022, 1:10 AM Larry Tusoni W6YH < larry@...> wrote: My 7300 works great with the LDG Z-11PROII tuner using the LDG-IC-PAC cable.
However, the cable is very difficult to remove from the 7300 and I am afraid to pull out the connector in the radio while trying to remove the cable.
Does anyone have any idea on how to easily remove it?
I will be using this radio and tuner at my portable location so will be setting it up quite a few times a year.
73,
Larry, W6YH
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How to remove the LDG-IC-PAC cable from an ICOM 7300
My 7300 works great with the LDG Z-11PROII tuner using the LDG-IC-PAC cable.
However, the cable is very difficult to remove from the 7300 and I am afraid to pull out the connector in the radio while trying to remove the cable.
Does anyone have any idea on how to easily remove it?
I will be using this radio and tuner at my portable location so will be setting it up quite a few times a year.
73,
Larry, W6YH
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Re: LDG products and specs?
I have 3 ldg tuners, 100ProII, Z100 and the 817 version for the Yaesu 817. They all work well. As for having digital modes, it is best to get away from cheap relay driven tuners. With higher power and high mode duty cycles tuners that do not rely on relays are a better option. Discrete parts such as roller inductors and HV variable caps are the most reliable. For high duty cycles with higher swr matches then the toroids in the relay driven models will take a beating if they heat up...and they will heat up and fail if too much power is dissipated through heat because of poor antennas. Always the best bet are resonant antennas. Tuners are only made to give one a bit of wiggle room.?
73, Morgan NJ8M BS + MS + $2.98 = COFFEE Real Life Experience = Priceless, says the man who set his back yard on fire with a breadboard tuner loading a 160 meter inverted L with 1000 watts. LOL
Hi, Jim.
I upgraded my ATU to support higher digital power too.
DJ0IP posted a nice spreadsheet summarizing ARRL tuner tests. Scroll down to the "DOWNLOAD THE SHOOT BELOW" link here:
I've heard (in this group, IIRC) that LDG has made some design changes recently. I have both a Z-100A, which performs just about perfectly and likely does reliably tune to SWRs similar to what appears for the Z-100 in DJ0IP's spreadsheet.
I upgraded to an AT-1000ProII, but it doesn't tune nearly as well as my Z100A, both in terms of SWR and reliability or as well as the AT-1000 numbers in the spreadsheet. Sometimes my AT-1000ProII autotune fails to be useful (even though bypass SWRs are over 2:1 but still under 4:1 or so) and I must tune manually using the buttons. My manual tune procedure includes the "High/Low Relay Adjustment", which the autotune feature doesn't seem capable of ever controlling. (See "Advanced Operation" in the manual for manual tuning procedures.)
First I need to mention that because a non-remote tuner doesn't actually mitigate coax standing wave signal losses, I only tune to preclude my IC-7100 from rolling back power, which it does for protection purposes around SWR 2:1 and up, so any autotune result that's better than 2:1 is good enough for me. Unfortunately, my AT-1000ProII sometimes fails to achieve 2:1 (or any tune at all), let alone meeting its optional 1.7:1 programmable target setting. Sometimes it also tunes far better than 2:1 or 1.7:1 but, occasionally, it doesn't come close to the set target.
LDG customer service is excellent. LDG replaced my first 1000ProII, which seemed to help with autotuning at the time and the new unit's memory reliability seems much improved, but I've since discovered the lack of High/Low Relay auto control and the autotune performance is still disappointing. My first unit also had a problem where the manual L and C button presses would sometimes only work in one direction, with no way to reverse an L/C button press without starting over with a long autotune button press. The replacement unit corrected this issue.
The bottom line is my Z-100A works very well but my AT-1000ProII seems to have firmware bugs. I need to phone LDG and beg for a firmware update fix--that's my hope for my AT-1000ProII right now.
Until then, I manually tune about 25% of all tunes and store them to memory. If a tune setting has a decent bandwidth, a manual technique that seems to work and is expedient is to rotate my IC-7100's dial a few kHz at a time (say 50 kHz or so) away from a good setting/frequency, briefly hit the transmit button (at very low power, if desired), and then simply push the memory store buttons after each frequency step on the dial. The AT-1000ProII seems to know the displayed frequency upon each transmit and button press so the technique will populate the memory with the tune setting across all the frequencies dialed. It's a fast way to load memory without actually re-tuning at every single step across the whole band. See "Manaual Memory Store" in the AT-1000ProII manual (again, under "Advanced Operations").
I would like to hear from LDG about any efforts to develop firmware to improve the performance of the AT-1000ProII so it will match my Z-100A's autotune performance.
73
Cal? AD8Q
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Re: LDG products and specs?
I wonder how critical the ground lug being not used affects the tuner attempts??
I recently got the 1000pro2 and also noticed it doesnt match perfect but everyones setup is different. Mine goes into a 9:1 unun driving 30ft of rain gutter.?
Its pretty broard so generally has been good but obviously when raining or snowing id expect variation.?
Sent from my jphone
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On Dec 7, 2022, at 1:44 PM, cbrabandt via groups.io <cbrabandt@...> wrote:
?Hi, Jim.
I upgraded my ATU to support higher digital power too.
DJ0IP posted a nice spreadsheet summarizing ARRL tuner tests. Scroll down to the "DOWNLOAD THE SHOOT BELOW" link here:
I've heard (in this group, IIRC) that LDG has made some design changes recently. I have both a Z-100A, which performs just about perfectly and likely does reliably tune to SWRs similar to what appears for the Z-100 in DJ0IP's spreadsheet.
I upgraded to an AT-1000ProII, but it doesn't tune nearly as well as my Z100A, both in terms of SWR and reliability or as well as the AT-1000 numbers in the spreadsheet. Sometimes my AT-1000ProII autotune fails to be useful (even though bypass SWRs are over
2:1 but still under 4:1 or so) and I must tune manually using the buttons. My manual tune procedure includes the "High/Low Relay Adjustment", which the autotune feature doesn't seem capable of ever controlling. (See "Advanced Operation" in the manual for manual
tuning procedures.)
First I need to mention that because a non-remote tuner doesn't actually mitigate coax standing wave signal losses, I only tune to preclude my IC-7100 from rolling back power, which it does for protection purposes around SWR 2:1 and up, so any autotune result
that's better than 2:1 is good enough for me. Unfortunately, my AT-1000ProII sometimes fails to achieve 2:1 (or any tune at all), let alone meeting its optional 1.7:1 programmable target setting. Sometimes it also tunes far better than 2:1 or 1.7:1 but, occasionally,
it doesn't come close to the set target.
LDG customer service is excellent. LDG replaced my first 1000ProII, which seemed to help with autotuning at the time and the new unit's memory reliability seems much improved, but I've since discovered the lack of High/Low Relay auto control and the autotune
performance is still disappointing. My first unit also had a problem where the manual L and C button presses would sometimes only work in one direction, with no way to reverse an L/C button press without starting over with a long autotune button press. The
replacement unit corrected this issue.
The bottom line is my Z-100A works very well but my AT-1000ProII seems to have firmware bugs. I need to phone LDG and beg for a firmware update fix--that's my hope for my AT-1000ProII right now.
Until then, I manually tune about 25% of all tunes and store them to memory. If a tune setting has a decent bandwidth, a manual technique that seems to work and is expedient is to rotate my IC-7100's dial a few kHz at a time (say 50 kHz or so) away from a good
setting/frequency, briefly hit the transmit button (at very low power, if desired), and then simply push the memory store buttons after each frequency step on the dial. The AT-1000ProII seems to know the displayed frequency upon each transmit and button press
so the technique will populate the memory with the tune setting across all the frequencies dialed. It's a fast way to load memory without actually re-tuning at every single step across the whole band. See "Manaual Memory Store" in the AT-1000ProII manual (again,
under "Advanced Operations").
I would like to hear from LDG about any efforts to develop firmware to improve the performance of the AT-1000ProII so it will match my Z-100A's autotune performance.
73
Cal? AD8Q
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Re: LDG products and specs?
Hi, Jim.
I upgraded my ATU to support higher digital power too.
DJ0IP posted a nice spreadsheet summarizing ARRL tuner tests. Scroll down to the "DOWNLOAD THE SHOOT BELOW" link here:
I've heard (in this group, IIRC) that LDG has made some design changes recently. I have both a Z-100A, which performs just about perfectly and likely does reliably tune to SWRs similar to what appears for the Z-100 in DJ0IP's spreadsheet.
I upgraded to an AT-1000ProII, but it doesn't tune nearly as well as my Z100A, both in terms of SWR and reliability or as well as the AT-1000 numbers in the spreadsheet. Sometimes my AT-1000ProII autotune fails to be useful (even though bypass SWRs are over 2:1 but still under 4:1 or so) and I must tune manually using the buttons. My manual tune procedure includes the "High/Low Relay Adjustment", which the autotune feature doesn't seem capable of ever controlling. (See "Advanced Operation" in the manual for manual tuning procedures.)
First I need to mention that because a non-remote tuner doesn't actually mitigate coax standing wave signal losses, I only tune to preclude my IC-7100 from rolling back power, which it does for protection purposes around SWR 2:1 and up, so any autotune result that's better than 2:1 is good enough for me. Unfortunately, my AT-1000ProII sometimes fails to achieve 2:1 (or any tune at all), let alone meeting its optional 1.7:1 programmable target setting. Sometimes it also tunes far better than 2:1 or 1.7:1 but, occasionally, it doesn't come close to the set target.
LDG customer service is excellent. LDG replaced my first 1000ProII, which seemed to help with autotuning at the time and the new unit's memory reliability seems much improved, but I've since discovered the lack of High/Low Relay auto control and the autotune performance is still disappointing. My first unit also had a problem where the manual L and C button presses would sometimes only work in one direction, with no way to reverse an L/C button press without starting over with a long autotune button press. The replacement unit corrected this issue.
The bottom line is my Z-100A works very well but my AT-1000ProII seems to have firmware bugs. I need to phone LDG and beg for a firmware update fix--that's my hope for my AT-1000ProII right now.
Until then, I manually tune about 25% of all tunes and store them to memory. If a tune setting has a decent bandwidth, a manual technique that seems to work and is expedient is to rotate my IC-7100's dial a few kHz at a time (say 50 kHz or so) away from a good setting/frequency, briefly hit the transmit button (at very low power, if desired), and then simply push the memory store buttons after each frequency step on the dial. The AT-1000ProII seems to know the displayed frequency upon each transmit and button press so the technique will populate the memory with the tune setting across all the frequencies dialed. It's a fast way to load memory without actually re-tuning at every single step across the whole band. See "Manaual Memory Store" in the AT-1000ProII manual (again, under "Advanced Operations").
I would like to hear from LDG about any efforts to develop firmware to improve the performance of the AT-1000ProII so it will match my Z-100A's autotune performance.
73
Cal? AD8Q
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Re: LDG products and specs?
I also regret that the LDG website is not as comprehensive as it once was - however the responsiveness of the customer service is still great, and that is the most important thing, from my perspective.
The various retailers that are listed as supporting the 2 year warranty are in the business of selling this gear, and often have excellent information - perhaps a call to the DX Engineering help number, or one of the others would be one way to get advice on what LDG product fits your needs?? These companies are already working to sell this gear, I can see the motivation for LDG to back off and use their resources in a different way.
On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 8:44 PM Earl Lizardi < wb6amt@...> wrote: get cracking.....
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Re: AT-1000 Pro II Split Tuner and Control Board?
It's possible, and we've heard from others that were looking for the same info. That at least says you are not rambling. ; ) Since there are TTL lines on the ribbon cable, one would probably need to shield the cable from stray RF somehow.
I'd guess #26 size is common in ribbon wire, so that is about 0.08 volt drop per 10 feet.
Good luck with your project,
Dwayne Kincaid
LDG
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Re: LDG products and specs?
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On Dec 6, 2022 9:57 AM, Jim N6KRJ <n6krj@...> wrote: As it seems like the LDG website is now a shell of its former self and is directing customers here. I have been considering upgrading my ATU to one that handles more power for digital modes, wanted to look for specs on the LDG but finding nothing. How is one supposed to shop without access to any specs? Having to download each of the zip files from this forum and then unpack and search is quite a bit of work - I¡¯m about ready to give up; but having had good service in the past I¡¯d like to stick with LDG - but frustration might win out ?
In the absence of a website to sell your products, can LDG folks at least provide some kind of chart on a single page that at least lists the common specs and capabilities of each of your products along with MSRP. Relying on resellers isn¡¯t the solution because half the retailers I¡¯ve spoken with can¡¯t even recommend a specific tuner for any brand of radio or antenna configuration, and most are going to start recommending some ¡°mighty fine junk¡± since product specs are now nearly impossible to locate ?
I hate to sound like a rant, but the lack of this information makes someone in the market for a new tuner want to go to a competitor as they have specs readily and easily available. Maybe someone at LDG will wake up and provide this information, or is this just a sign that you guys are getting ready to retire and shutter the business?
Regards,
Jim
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As it seems like the LDG website is now a shell of its former self and is directing customers here. I have been considering upgrading my ATU to one that handles more power for digital modes, wanted to look for specs on the LDG but finding nothing. How is one supposed to shop without access to any specs? Having to download each of the zip files from this forum and then unpack and search is quite a bit of work - I¡¯m about ready to give up; but having had good service in the past I¡¯d like to stick with LDG - but frustration might win out ?
In the absence of a website to sell your products, can LDG folks at least provide some kind of chart on a single page that at least lists the common specs and capabilities of each of your products along with MSRP. Relying on resellers isn¡¯t the solution because half the retailers I¡¯ve spoken with can¡¯t even recommend a specific tuner for any brand of radio or antenna configuration, and most are going to start recommending some ¡°mighty fine junk¡± since product specs are now nearly impossible to locate ?
I hate to sound like a rant, but the lack of this information makes someone in the market for a new tuner want to go to a competitor as they have specs readily and easily available. Maybe someone at LDG will wake up and provide this information, or is this just a sign that you guys are getting ready to retire and shutter the business?
Regards,
Jim
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Re: Best customer service from LDG
I had the same experience as well.? I hooked up the power in reverse, and they diagnosed and replaced the IC.? Thank you LDG.
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Tim K4SHF
Ed - ad7gr
Michael WA7SKG
Morgan Bailey
Jay Lubliner
Earl Lizardi
Jim N6KRJ