Automatic tuner and SWR meter

lithiumoxide

Hey all,

If a transceiver has an automatic antenna tuner, does it still need to have an SWR meter?

Managed to land myself a Kenwood TS-440SAT, so should have it on the air over the next couple of weeks!

watty

yes, it does and likely it has somewhere.

You can either make a mistake on aerial wiring or have a combination of aerial , feeder and frequency that won't tune.

The built in Auto Match is very very limited compared to an LDG for instance. Also only works with very short feeder compared to frequency (i.e. on 10m, 1m is short and on 160m, 16m is short).

An external auto match such as LDG, SGC, Yaesu or Elecraft T1 can be at the feed point of aerial and then you use what ever length of coax and it makes to difference.

Unless you have a fairly matched aerial you'd want a separate manual or auto tuner.

The TS440S is a fair rig but no radio is indestructable. Always tune on low power (<10W) and/or AM if possible (AM automatically is 1/4 the power of SSB peak, FM or CW and requires no wistling to mic etc as tuning on SSB mode does).

At low power it's nearly impossible to damage the radio with open or shorted feeder or very high SWR aerial. At full power the P.A. transistors can blow faster than the protection circuits can wind down the power