Tuner recommendation

[Mudfoot]

I'm not terribly familiar with older manual tuners. I need one that will accept 600 watts and can be tuned with 3-5 watts. I'm finding autotuners have difficulty initiating a tune with low power.

My ELAD can approach 10 watts, but isn't enough on some bands to tune my MFJ-998. The 500 and 1000 watt LDG tuners are finicky as well. Some of the modern manual tuners are hard to tune. The low input doesn't have umph to raise the needles. I'm hoping some of the older tuners can handle 600 watts and have a low meter scale so I can tune.

The only tuner I haven't tried is the MFJ-994b. It says it'll tune with minimum of 2 watts, but states a minimum of 20 watts is need for an accurate tune.

Anything out there?

 

[fourstringburn]

I think you're going to have a tough time finding tuners for low wattage tuning like that. Just like an accurate SWR meter, it needs decent power and a half scale reading for better accuracy.

I just check my Elecraft KAT500 and it won't tune very well below 20 watts, even 10 watts. However, This is truly a smart tuner with a very comprehensible user software setup. There is also a way to make it read band data on any modern radio and truly auto-tune in a near nano second anywhere you previous tuned before just by moving the VFO or changing bands. My old MFJ-998 couldn't do that!

I guess what you could do is have 2 radio's on a switch before the tuner and use the higher power to tune with so your tuner is ready to go then switch in the low power radio.

Maybe?

 

[Mudfoot]

My little 200 watt MFJ-939 tunes great with couple watts. I'm thinking the MFJ-994b will be the same. It's 600 watts. I just ordered one from R&l few minutes ago. Hopefully it works. My 998 legal limit tuner will tune on certain bands. I wish the ELAD had a tad more umph.

 

[fourstringburn]

Great, Good luck!

 

[Mudfoot]

LOL, I did think about the 2 rig option.

 

[fourstringburn]

Worth a shot!

 

[Mudfoot]

Hooked up the MFJ-994b today. It tunes nicely with 5 watts input from the ELAD. All my other autotuners can be programmed for a target SWR of 1.5, except the MFJ-939. The 994b has two settings for target SWR. 1.5 and 2.0 are the choices.

I have it set for 1.5. Sometimes, it will tune a little less, but mostly 1.5 or tad higher. I have my ELAD programmed to output a 10 watt Cartier for 15 seconds. It's very easy to adjust the capacitance and inductor buttons to quickly get a lower SWR within that 15 seconds. The 994b has a twin needle meter. It has 300/3000 watt ranges. It's only a 600 watt tuner. The meter is functional, but awfully small and only reads average power.

MFJ makes a similar size tuner with 30p watt capacity. That model has a meter and a ln LCD display. Kinda odd that the 994b is absent this meter. I do like this tuner. It works very well.