Essential Things to Consider Before Buying an ATU

I was "conned" into buying an ATU as a "junior" ham radio operator. Why? Because I didn't know any different. Unless you are running balanced feeder, I suggest giving it a miss until you can't actually live without one. Callum, M0MCX.
More videos:

[mewrongwayKOCXF]

Been a ham since 1979 and never owned a tuner. Thanks Callum!

[mickgibson]

I tune my system: 1 coax with dummy load. 2 antenna. I have been able to hit stations 400 km away using 2 meters with an SWR 1.1. It even makes receiving better! I hand made my antenna.

[Eric]

Glad I watched this video! I never understood why people always said the 80m band was “so big”. The 300khz bandwidth is smaller than the 350khz bandwidth we have on 20m, what gives? It never occurred to me it was the percentage not the raw bandwidth that was the issue for tuning. Makes perfect sense now. Thanks Callum!

[fredroessler]

Well, not Fred in Texas but Fred in Oregon. I am Not a Ham but an SWL, however I mostly listen to the Ham bands. My antenna is a home built fan dipole for 20M, 40M and 80M. I used to have a vertical antenna as well but during a winter storm it broke in half and I never got around to replacing it. I really like your videos. They are very informative.

[glennarrant]

I went to a HWEF just the get rid of the ATU on my FT 818. Thanks for all the common sense.

[hiltopuk]

I think anyone setting up will look at a kit of parts and say yeah I need one of those without actually knowing why. Good to know why we need and don't always need some bits of kit.

[ZeroHarry]

Callum, I had to look up what it meant when I first saw your painted nail.

This is what I found. Since the start of October (2016), men around the world have been painting one fingernail to join the Polished Man movement and raise awareness about physical and sexual violence against children.

### Keep rocking it mate. ###

[jackKFIT]

A friend recently put up a Nebula at his place. He runs a solid state amp and a tuner. He kept kicking the amp when running through the tuner and finally figured out he didn't need the tuner with the amp and the Nebula since he tuned the antenna elements when he put them up. He's happy. His amp is happy and the Nebula is happy. I'm happy too because my Classic is in transit right now. Thanks!! Jack K5FIT

[mikemurphy]

One correction. Most modern radio "tuners" are good to about 3:1. Really appreciate your take on this Callum. You do a great job breaking this stuff down so that it is easy to understand. - KI8R

[pcad]

It's not just because of tuning, but also no need to switch antenna's when going from one band to another which makes this lovable product 🙂

[bill-]

Yep, thumbs up from me.
Been h.f. since 1976 and very successfully used a roller coaster and variable capacitor on long wires. Went QRP some 30 years ago.
Now having a motorbike only and FT817 for portable use as it's smaller than my h/b rig and luckily another amateur gave me his MFJ16010 atu which he said didn't work. I used it for 2 years before it gave up. Investigating inside I could see nothing wrong until I poked around and found a wire had not been soldered but looked as though it was touching. I soldered it and no problem.
I now have an outside inverted vee for 60m with dipoles in the attic for 20m to 10m.
G4GHB

[markrowell]

I started out on HF with a 17' vertical with a coil at the bottom and jumper I had to go outside and move every time I changed bands (PITA) and it got me on 10 - 10 meters. My Elmer said a vertical would be very noisy since I lived right by an Interstate highway. It was a little high but not bad and I could reach Western Europe, Australia, South America, and Asia from Oregon, USA.

I then got an LDG-100 remote tuner and left it tuned for 40 meters, and it worked okay and I didn't have to trudge outside to switch bands. I finally got a 50 foot tower with a Hex beam (20, 17, 15, 12, 10 meters) so I get some gain and some side/back signal attenuation...AND NO TUNING NEEDED! Woo-hoo! I changed the length of my vertical (slide joints) to make it a dedicated 6 meter antenna, and again no tuning. To fill out the upper bands I use an Icom remote tuner so my transmission line losses are minimal to get 80-10 meters with simple in-the-shack tuning button.

I agree tuned antennas are the cat's meow, but there are fully acceptable alternatives that work too (like your compromise on 80 meters. Nice video and thanks for your putting out this info.

[andye]

Agree with much of what you say, but... ATU / matching units have always been necessary for me, mainly because I have never had the space to fit a resonant antenna. (hoping that a "bent around corners" end fed half wave may help) So I've always needed to use "compromise antennas" A good external match box is a huge help in such situations. It also highlights that many internal tuners don't have the range to tune short wires, or such like. They do as other comment's have said often give up around 3:1

Andy

[jolebole-yt]

Excellent logic. This tuner "necessity" is more pronounced on QRP portable operations where if you are running random antenna with high SWR without a tuner, you gonna waste some loss on the coax and some loss because of a higher swr. So instead of 5W you are sending 1-2W for eg. Comes down to pick your Ham compromise kit and go out and have fun. Retailers are indeed shoving tuner ads in our face as much as they can as they are cheap to build but they sell them at a high premium!
Have you ever considered publishing a book with all these wisdom nuggets? Here's a book title for ya: "Caullm's HAM Haiku " ?

[matknight]

In the short time ive been licenced and for many years on freebands, my take is a Resonant Antenna should be your first port of call over an Atu. Do the job right first time may help reduce unnecessary costs in the long run. Just my take and opinion. 73 Callum, keep up the good work.

[FatPengiun]

Thanks for all of your videos, I especially like these little snippets of information. It is always a pleasure to watch/listen to you talk about radio stuff that I find really relevant to me especially about the mic shy stuff.
Keep it up you are doing great.
Geoff, VK4NIX.

[EOGIY]

What kind of impedance will have a fan dipole that covers i.e. 3 parts of 80m bands? 3 sets of wires: one tuned to CW part 3.550, one for the middle 3.650, and one for the top 3.750

[Eagleeye]

Great thoughts on ATU's and their spot in the big picture of Amateur radio.

[gebrowniii]

My IC7300 will match 3:1 not much more. My TS890 will do 10:1 with no issues, problem is I live in a neighborhood and my only choice because of lot size is a fan dipole which is good from 1.5:1 to 5:1 across all of the bands I operate. My solution was to run one ATU into one amplifier and be nice to both of my radios whatever I am running at the time. I agree with you most of the time unnecessary but with all the jumping around it protects against brain fade. Keep up the good work. 73

[sparkdg]

I’ve been trying to find out if I need a tuner. This is exactly the video I’ve been looking for. I’m a new ham just bought my mobile radio, power supply, antenna and coax and not sure if I’ll ruin my equipment not having a tuner and a swr meter.