Low Power and some thoughts on the TGXL

Rob_K8YV

Well here my thoughts on the tuner genius xl.
Found a few little items but have a work around.
First one is the Low Power warning. there are a few settings you need to be aware of.
1. Your tx delay 20 to 40 mine is at 30
2. Is the actual power level 10 min 20 seems to work well, it varies from band to band.
3. if you get a Low Power level try switching to standby then back seems to clear it up.
Not a problem but something you might want to look at.
A nice feature.
The SWR setting.

You can set the SWR on each band to what you like it to be. You can also set an no tune freq for ant that is resonate.
The default is 1.25 for all bands.

I set mine at 1.15, and have seen 1.01.
I built a 4:1 balun for my ladder line and it tunes it with no problem.
I also have and 2x8 antenna genius, which interfaces nice.
Now my wish list:
A way to tune the TGXL from the Maestro, maybe an F key that programed to function like pressing the tune button. Now that would be a great option.
This is my option, I'm sure others would have some different items.
Rob K8YV

K1ESE

I found that if you set TX Delay to 200ms all you get is "Low Power". Set it back to 30ms and all is well.

Touchy!

Ian

I believe the Low Power warning means you need increase the tuning power to 20 watts

From the manual (which is incomplete)

"Set the drive power at the transmitter to about 20 watts and transmit a carrier.  The tuner should switch into transmit mode. "

once I did this I do not got that waring message.

Ian VE3JI

Mike-VA3MW

Thanks Ian. Good point.

@K1ESE, what power are you tuning with?

K1ESE

20 Watts. I checked.

K1ESE

Also, in my first message, 200ms was not a typo. I get low power warning at two hundred ms. You can't determine enough until you find too much.

David Decoons, wo2x

There is a certain timeframe it expects to see power. 200 ms delay is too long.

Dave wo2x

Mike-VA3MW

You can go more than 20 watts. Try 30 watts and 20 ms.

Mike

Rob_K8YV

Yep 20 watts and 20 ms seems to be the magic numbers.
Took the hole shack apart and moved it, what a pain putting everything back.

W2PP

Actually while it sounds counter intuitive if you see the low power error try reducing the power. Why? Because non FRS radios have final protection. At higher power the radio abruptly cuts power. Some radios will tolerate higher SWR at low power and not reduce power output. My ICOM 7851 tolerates 10:1 SWR at 20 watts. So I cut power which helped a bit. The reason this doesn’t fix the entire problem is that during auto tuning the radio is exposed to what appears to be an open circuit.

FRS radios in the tune mode don’t cut power so it generally works

Peter