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Ft-857?

Mudfoot

Elmer
Jun 17, 2009
10,917
6,290
698
62
Southeast Ohio
Liking this rig and the "horrible" ATAS more each day. I made some good contacts last few days. I only have the ATAS mounted to the top of my rear passenger door. I slapped it in quick just to see how it did. I haven't even bonded anything yet. I just made sure each screw on my K400 bit into the metal real good.

My boy open the rear door and rig started clacking and spazzing. Shut the door and all went good. I intend to properly bond everything, but hey, it's working. Do you think I'll see better results once I do. I get good SWR on each band, but lowest 40 meters goes is about 1:6:1. I suspect that's decent enough anyways.

Regarding the rig itself, it seems noisy. I engage IPO, but I have been running the attenuator as well.

I can't decide if I want to mount it on top near the real lift gate or use my ball mount on rear quarter. I mean, it seems to be OK where it's at. I dislike not having 80 meters. Wonder why Yaesu hasn't come out with an updated ATAS?
 

I would go with the Little Tarheel 2 if you want 80 meters. You'll lose the automatic tuning like you do with the ATAS but you can go with an external antenna controller for auto tuning like the Tune-matic,Target Tuner, or Turbo-tuner.

I use the Tune-matic because it let's you manual fine tune if the auto tune is off a bit. The Turbo-tuner is the easiest but has no manual fine tune option but these auto-tuners generally will tune to a reasonably good match providing your antenna is installed correctly and grounded and able to get a good match to start with.

However, just like your ATAS antenna, the Tarheel 2 is limited to your 100 watt radio which is just fine if you never plan on using an amplifier.

I use the Little Tarheel HP with a ALS-500M amplifier which gives me 6m thru 60m with a 5ft whip. If I want to run 80 meters I can only run it when I'm stationary and I simply replace the 5ft whip with a 16.5 ft telescoping whip that MFJ sells. This not only gives me 80 meters but significantly increases efficiency on 40 meters and other bands too! On 20 meters it's already a 1/4 wavelength so I actually have to retract the whip some to tune there.

Just something to think about...
 
Yes, I have been looking at the Tarheel. I was just obsessing over which controller would suit me. A friend of mine has a screwdriver he picked up years ago. He's not sure, but thinks it's a Tarheel. I'm going to look at it and possibly work a trade. I'm liking the whole mobile thing, but I'm going to need 80. Still find it odd that Yaesu didn't update the ATAS.
 
Yeah, mobile HF is great! I have made many great DX contacts and ragchews doing so.

I have tried nearly every antenna controller out there so I can give honest opinions about them.

1. Stay away from the MFJ/Ameritron controllers. The 10 memory model doesn't always tune to exactly the point where you set the memo points often requiring manual tunes. The more you use it, the worse it gets. It gets better when you park the antenna which will reset it to your memo points and start it all over again. It's not very wise to be driving and be constantly re-tuning antennas. I used this for a month or so and sold it after it drove me crazy.

2. The MFJ-1927 auto- tuner seems good because it reads band data to tune. Problem is when I used it that it will constantly move the antenna as you tune the VFO . This is fine except when you just want to tune around and listen to the bands and not have this thing constantly tuning which got annoying after a while. The only way to stop it is to power it off. It does have manual tuning capability though. I used this one for a week and sent it back.

3. Turbo-Tuner; works good and usually tunes near or close to the lowest SWR point. There is no manual tune function to fine tune it if it misses so you have to change bands, tune and change back to where you were at and try a re-tune to see if it tunes better if your a stickler for the lowest SWR your antenna is capable of. This is the easiest to install with only 1 cable for some radio's. Others may require 2. I used this 1 for a month and traded it for some other gear.

4. West Mountain Target tuner; Works well as an auto-tuner, has manual touch up if auto-tune is off a bit. Has many user programmable features. The thing I didn't like was it uses up to 4 cables between the dash mount control and controller box. I used this one for a couple years until I heard about the Tune-matic features.

Tune-Matic; Works well as an auto-tuner just like the Target-tuner above. It tunes by both memo-points and SWR. It too has manual control for SWR touch ups if needed. I like the automatic amplifier bypass which will let you tune without powering off the amp. This one uses only 1 cable to the dash mount control switch but uses 2 between the radio and main control box but these could be stashed aside out of sight. I still use this one and I will say it's been the best of all of them.

Tune- Matic lite; I haven't used this one but it's a lower cost version of the Tune-Matic which is simpler to use and interface. This one is user memory tune with 20 memo points and does have manual tune for touch ups also.

To sum it up, If you want an easy to use and interface auto-controller, go with the Turbo-tuner but consider it's limitations.

The Tune-Matic Lite seems good for the same reasons if just a memo tuner is good enough for you.

If an auto-tune controller is what your wanting, I would consider the Tune-Matic.

Hope that helps!
 

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