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I purchased the internal antenna tuner with the 5000A. I have been through several Power SDR upgrades. Today the tuner does not pull in even a 50 ohm antenna to 1.0:1. The best it does is 1.3:1 even when the threshold is set at 1.1:1. The tuner shuts off and says the tune was successful. I sometimes run through tuning several times to get it even below 2.0:1. On antennas with 3.0:1 VSWR it often can not pull it in or stops at 2.6:1 VSWR. Am I doing something wrong or is the algorithm messed up?
Also the tuner is extremely noisy. My wife hears it over the TV in a room 30 feet away.
Bill
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The internal ATU on the flex 5000 is the worst internal ATU i have ever run across. Even a 2:5:1 SWR will confuse it. It is a waste of $$$$.
The biggest problem I have with the Flex ATU is it is falsely advertised on their website. They claim it will match a 10:1 SWR which is not even close. It will struggle to match a 3:1 SWR and most of the time it will not match even that.
Flex should either fix the ATU or stop advertising it will match a 10:1 SWR..
Stan K9IUQ
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Hi !
I got my 5KA a couple of weeks ago and must say the rig is really outstanding except the ATU...
There must be something faulty in it !
No correct tune is possible even on small mismatches. I'm utilizing a folded dipole from B&W. Native (ATU bypass) SWR is usually around 1.7 on all bands except on 40 where I have around 2.1. I m using a 1 meter ground rod less than 2 meters away from the 5K 's case.
Under no circumstances the ATU will provide a correct match but on 80 meters.
And yes it is noisy : a true relay clicking solo !
When clicking the ATU button after QSYing on a band, a tune attempt starts immediatly making the relay symphony begin. I have to press the TUN button to stop this and will wait several seconds until a single relay click indicates the band change in the ATU.
After that it does tune but matching and SWR indication remain very poor, even sometimes worse than on a bypass tune ! Except on 80 as I mentioned.
The question is what to do ?
So far the unit is not suitable as an ATU.
73's to all.
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Moderator
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Last Login: Monday, June 20, 2011 6:07 PM
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What to do?
Contact FlexRadio Support about all hardware and software setup issues.
Technical Support (US)
+1 (512) 535-4713 (menu option #2)
support@flex-radio.com
-----
Tim - W4TME
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I own the LDG AT200PC auto-tuner. It had problems, and also didn't have enough tuning range for my 80m dipole. The Dipole changed into a 320 ft horizontal loop - and the LDG continued to under-perform. It is just not up to the job of tuning everything from 10m to 80m on an 80m dipole or horizontal loop.
I replaced the LDG tuner with a Palstar ATAUTO antenna tuner. The Palstar unit is not perfect, but I am pleased with it. The Palstar ATAUTO's box is a dozen times larger than the LDG AT200PC's box, ATAUTO handles legal limit in all modes at 100% duty cycle. The ATAUTO has a separate board (for the computer interface, LCD, and buttons). This board is tucked away in a front corner of the box.
I have written software to control the LDG AT200PC antenna tuner, and I suppose it works OK on an antenna that is already close to resonant. LDG designed it to keep the onboard computer OFF - and the S/W wakes it up before sending commands to it, and then the computer turns itself off again. LDG designed it this way because LDG knew the RF going through this tuner screws up its onboard computer. LDG should have moved the CAT computer onto a separate board and figured out how to shield it from interference - but apparently this was not done.
The biggest problem I had was the tuner routinely gets confused - it's internal on-board computer freezes up from the RF going through it. It will also routinely report the wrong frequency. The big problem was when talking SSB on 80m it would routinely start tuning again while I talk - and never get a tune no matter how long I talked. The solution was to disable the auto-tune function.
If I send a tune signal, and then try to control the AT200PC, the tuner ignores all commands until I stop XMTing the tune signal. So, I have to click on FULL TUNE, and then start transmitting, as the reverse order won't work. This tuner has major hardware design flaws and it's good that it has been discontinued - yet it lives on.
I sent the tuner back to LDG under warranty - LDG said it works perfectly. LDG claimed I had stray RF in the shack, but I put several large torroids on every jumper in the shack with no effect. I spent hundereds of dollars on devices to eliminate stray rf with no affect. I learned on HRD's forums that LDG told Simon the same thing - claims of fictitious Stray RF in shacks where other auto-tuners (even other LDG models) worked flawlessly.
The AT200PC was the first and last computer controlled tuner that LDG ever made. It was discontinued - not because people did not want a computer controlled tuner, but because Simon at Ham Radio Deluxe could not succeed in getting it to work properly. If HRD could have succeeded with it, then it would have sold like hot-cakes. Although the AT200PC is discontinued, thousands of them are still sitting in warehouses available at a substantial discount from w4rt's website - and the AT200PC lives on as this internal one board tuner.
Free software from Supercontrol and from N3ZH_Software can control this model tuner - something HRD gave up on, but the tuner is far from perfect performing.
Anyways, I believe the Flex internal tuner is a one board LDG tuner which is either identical to the model AT200PC, or is perhaps an adaptation of the AT200PC. It performs a full tune operation faster than my AT200PC external tuner, so it must at least have firmware differences.
It was a good business decision on Flex Radio's part. Rather than develop and build an antenna tuner, they buy an LDG one board internal tuner - and provide it to their customers at a very fair price.
If PowerSDR CAT commands existed to allow third party software to send/receive AT200PC commands to it, then perhaps the Flex internal tuner would work better? This would entail an additional virtual COM port for tuner CAT control. But, perhaps this would not solve the problems, as the problems might be hardware or firmware.
This internal ATU might come in handy in some emergency or at field day. It was low cost, and I have faith that Flex Radio will eventually get it working well - or as well as possible given its possible hardware/firmware limitations.
Howard
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| If you guys think the Flex 5000 tuner is bad then you have probably never experienced a Yaesu 450-AT radio. Any way, even with all the bad things that have been said and written I just ordered an internal tuner for my 5000. Why? Because it has been stated on numerous occasions that the code that controls the tuner is being worked on to improve it's operation and I trust Flex to follow through and make the tuner work the way it should.
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I'm on the edge as to get the 5000. So are all ATU units like this, are just some of them? I have been looking at the K3 and add the lp-pan SDR to it. I will be at Dayton looking at them all. I like what I see from the Flex and seem to be good staff as well. Will Flex fix the ATU's?
73s de K7TNT DN74fg
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K7TNT (5/8/2010)
I'm on the edge as to get the 5000. So are all ATU units like this, are just some of them?
Will Flex fix the ATU's?
Yes, they are (were) all substandard compared to other ATU's. HOWEVER they are much improved in the latest PB-pal svn software. I have noticed a considerable improvement the last couple of weeks in the performance of the ATU. *Most* of the time it has been working satisfactorily.......
Stan K9IUQ
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Thanks for the info. I don't know if I can wait tell the end of the weak to see the 5000 at Dayton or not. I may have to buy one first!
73s de K7TNT DN74fg
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