REVIEW VAN K6XD    |    MFJ 993 INTELLIGENTE AUTOTUNER


K6XD Rating: 5/5 Dec 27, 2003 14:58

OUTSTANDING !  Time owned: 0 to 3 months

I received my tuner on the 23rd of December and have put it through its paces. Using a G5RV which displayes a wide range of impedances from 160 to 10 meters and a FT-100D running 15 watts of dead carrier in the AM mode and 100+ on SSB and CW.

I found out that the tuner can do a lot more then the MFJ ads say. It will automatically change its configuration from high to low impedance. It has a self test mode that will check out all circuits. You can calibrate the forward and reflected power meters without applying any power to the tuner and if it fails the self test mode it will tell you what is not working.

I checked it out on all bands and it was able to flatten the swr from band edge to band edge. When it is trying to find the right combination it sounds like a machine gun and you want to turn something off to stop it but this is normal.

I then started at the bottom of 160 meters and put into memory all the combinations to flatten the system up to the top of the band. I did this all the way up to 10 meters. Now no more machine gun noise. When you change frequency enough or change bands that makes the swr increase above the threshold it will remember the combination when you apply in my case 15 watts and all you hear is one click and it is ready to go. It is so fast you don't even know you have a tuner in line.

The only way one could screw up this tuning mode is by setting the AUTO Tune Menu to low. With 15 watts the swr will show 1:1 but it you increase the power to 100 watts the swr will increases and if you have the threshold set low it will want to go into the search mode so it is best to set the threshold to 1.5 the default is 1.

Now I decided to have some fun so I connected a lead to my rain spout which was 22 feet long with 8 feet of down spout. I connected the feed line 7 feet from the end which made it easier to bring into the shack. Guess you
would call this antenna an off center feed rain spout. I loaded it up on 17 meters and called CQ. Got a 9+5 over in VA 57 in NC 58 in MI and 57 in MO. Changed bands to 20 meters and worked Europe with 10 watts.

I don't see how you could go wrong with a tuner that has enough memory to cover all the ham bands with 2 antennas and do it with one click. No more of this search up and down waiting for a match. MFJ has come up with a winner on this one and the price is right!

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