Been a long while since I went mobile with my ham radios. I use the MFJ antennas that resemble the fire sticks. Even though they were tuned with my antenna analyzer, the radio tuner will still hunt the lowest SWR when keyed. I hooked up a radio I hadn't used for a while and the tuner kept hunting with out stopping.
I hooked up the analyzer and the SWR was almost perfect. Now I was confused. (Not unusual anymore)
Trying to remember if I had this problem on this radio before I checked my notes and had no troubles listed for this radio. I got my 50 ohm test load and tested it again and lo and behold the search was on. After about ten seconds it finally locked down. I tested on the other bands and the process repeated on all of them.
I retested each band again and lock down was less than a 1/4 of a second for each one.
Went out to the mobile and it worked perfectly. By tuning it back up on a resistive load it, I guess centered the tuner on the frequency on a resistive load. it must have been 7 or 8 months since the radio had been used as the base unit and not in the mobile. The base antenna check out okay just a little high on 20 meters.
So if you have one that's hunting take it to a dummy load and see if that fixes it. It could save a repair cost you don't need.
I hooked up the analyzer and the SWR was almost perfect. Now I was confused. (Not unusual anymore)
Trying to remember if I had this problem on this radio before I checked my notes and had no troubles listed for this radio. I got my 50 ohm test load and tested it again and lo and behold the search was on. After about ten seconds it finally locked down. I tested on the other bands and the process repeated on all of them.
I retested each band again and lock down was less than a 1/4 of a second for each one.
Went out to the mobile and it worked perfectly. By tuning it back up on a resistive load it, I guess centered the tuner on the frequency on a resistive load. it must have been 7 or 8 months since the radio had been used as the base unit and not in the mobile. The base antenna check out okay just a little high on 20 meters.
So if you have one that's hunting take it to a dummy load and see if that fixes it. It could save a repair cost you don't need.
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