6400 ATU tunes but seems 'forgetful'

Pat_W5WTH

At times I will leave a band for awhile and come back to it only to get a higher than expected SWR. I click the ATU button in SmartSDR and the tuner matches the ant just fine.

I have ATU memory turned on, so why does this happen? I don't think that in the course of an hour or so the ant would need such a retune; it never happened with the IC7300 anyway.

It's like my Flex isn't storing the settings that the ATU adjusted to. Is this normal? Am I doing it wrong? Maybe I don't understand what the "MEM" button next to the "ATU" button does?

Erika - KØDD

I have a 6500 on 3.1.12.

Here's what I have found, use the radio for HOURS each day changing bands and moving between modes etc...

I use the tuner now that I have a tower and tribander up and with other antennas using coax instead of my balanced external tuner.

I start with 14.010 and tune the tuner. Move up the band a bit 15-20 khz and tune again in my radio I can hear an audible click when it moves past the pretuned point. I tune again. Until I'm tuning 14.295. I go to 15 do the whole band again. Then ten.

The tribander is the only antenna on antenna 1 port. Radio power supply always stays on if it gets turned off all bets are off on the mem staying put. Mem is always turned on too.

All my other antennas use port 2. I change the coax to the balanced tuner on say 60,30,17,12 as I use the 135 cf doublet. Mem is on but the tuner is in bypass.... if I switch to 40 that's a dipole. Still port 2 but the tuner is used so not by passed, "program the band".

160 I use the doublet as a Marconi so it doesn't use the balanced tuner. But has a separate coax connector to port 2. The band is programmed. Are you getting the concept?

If I've been on 10 and I drop to 15, I only tap the tune button, not the actual ATU button. I tap tune and the tuner will go to the 15 meter tuning from mem. But it won't change between ant port 1 and 2. I do need to make sure to do that manually. Then tap tune and it will recall. If I leave the power supply on always I'm good. I can shut down the radio, and turn it back on and tap tune and operate.

Band changes sometimes are clean if I change bands from wsjt-x to the rig band button. I do tap tune just to make sure and it will behave itself. With normal weather changes the swr may come up and I'll need to retuned to 1.2 or 1.1:1. All antennas WILL tune to low swr just takes a lot of tuning attempts the first time and or if the weather forces a retune.

If it tunes something to 2:1 or even 1.5:1 keep tuning attempts it will get to 1.1:1 but no more than 1.3:1 Once done maybe one or two times per day there might be one segment the needs updating, but its usually always close. YMMV. But if you get him setup and don't turn off the Power supply mine behaves just fine. Turn mem off and you might be reprogramming everything again. It just doesn't work like your Icom radio, and you need to adjust your thinking to how it does work. Erika DD

Pat_W5WTH

Thank you for those comments.

Per the manual: " The ATU Memory feature eliminates the need to manually retune the ATU to find a match when changing frequencies if the new frequency range in question already has an associated ATU memory."

My ATU memory certainly does NOT seem to function like this. I often have to retune AND it's can sometimes be a big tune (sounds like a new tune) based on the time and clicking that goes on. My FLEX ATU MEM just doesn't seem to work as advertised.

My ant has an worse case untuned SWR of 2.5:1 or so on 10-80m. My rig stays on 24x7. My tune power is 10w.

Am I the only one with a seemingly "forgetful" ATU MEM? I'm still open to any "it's user error" suggestions, but since it's only one button it's hard to do it wrong.

aa3ssradio

It is a bug that came about with one of the updates. It has not been fixed yet . . . As Usual

Pat_W5WTH

OK. Thanks. That makes me feel better than it isn't me, but doesn't make me feel better in other ways....