TGXL Workout Utility

Dan-N7HQ

Something I keep running into on the service bench: a good share of the Tuner Genius XLs that come in aren't really broken.

Think about how yours actually lives. If you mostly work 20 and 40, those relay positions get hammered and the rest of them haven't moved since the day you put it in the shack. Contacts don't love sitting still - they sit, they oxidize a little, resistance creeps up, and eventually the tuner starts doing the things people write to me about: tuning long, hunting, settling on a match that isn't great, or just refusing to find one it handled fine two sessions ago.

Turns out the fix is often nothing more than making them move. So, I wrote a little routine to do exactly that. Point it at your tuner's IP address and it works every relay in the box, in and out, several times each - all 24 in the C-L-C network, the antenna switching, and the ones that swap the tuner in and out of line. Couple of minutes. No test gear, nothing to take apart, no cables to move, just a computer on the same network as the tuner.

More often than you'd think, that's the whole repair.

And if it isn't, you haven't lost anything. It reads every command back from the tuner before it sends the next one, so you end up with a report that says exactly which ones your tuner did and which it quietly ignored. That's the part you can't get by standing there listening to it click - and it's the first thing I'd want to look at if the tuner ends up coming to me anyway.

Really though: don't wait for it to start acting up. Ounce of prevention. Run it a couple of times a year - before contest season, after the tuner's sat through a quiet summer, whenever you think of it - and the contacts never get the chance to go to sleep in the first place. `--quick` is plenty for a routine pass; it still works every relay it just doesn't crawl through all 256 positions of each bank. All it costs you is the stored tuning for whatever band you're parked on, and the tuner builds that back the next time you use it.

Two house rules: nothing can be transmitting while it runs (it refuses to start if the tuner reports PTT and stops cold if a channel keys mid-run - a relay switched under RF is a dead relay), and close SSDR or the companion app or anything else talking to the tuner first, since it only takes a couple of network connections.

Windows installer, Mac/Linux installer, or just run the one Python file - it needs nothing else installed. Holler if it turns up something odd and send me the report.

TGXL_Relay_Exec.zip

Tom Porada

Interesting utility.

Ran it the first time and it did not take very long. I don't think it made it thru the entire cycle.

Ran it a second then third time and I think it made it all the way thru but I did not see any report.

Where does the report file go?

Will the report file be written even if the test does not complete at all or if it completes with errors?

Tom W4IEE

Gord-VA7GP

Thanks! It worked for me, running Linux (Mint) as my desktop machine. My TGXL 1x3 chattered away for 1m 26s, and produced the report (located in the same directory where I was, which was where the .py executable was located).

I see this in the Report - looks fine, except for the ANT Position switching … In actual use, I do select between ANT1 (hexbeam), ANT2 (40m dipole) and ANT3 (high-power dummy load). All get exercised routinely, and happily pass 1+kW of RF:

THE TUNING NETWORK -- 24 RELAYS

Each bank is a binary ladder of eight relays. Stepping the bank
by one count changes a binary word, so one step can operate
several relays at once; the counts below are of this relay's own
contacts moving.

RELAY OPERATED NOT TAKEN VERDICT
C1 bit 0 (RL8, 10 pF) 782 0 ok
C1 bit 1 (RL7, 20 pF) 396 0 ok
C1 bit 2 (RL6, 40 pF) 204 0 ok
C1 bit 3 (RL5, 78 pF) 108 0 ok
C1 bit 4 (RL4, 164 pF) 60 0 ok
C1 bit 5 (RL3, 300 pF) 36 0 ok
C1 bit 6 (RL2, 660 pF) 24 0 ok
C1 bit 7 (RL1, 1320 pF) 18 0 ok

L bit 0 (47 nH) 782 0 ok
L bit 1 (95 nH) 396 0 ok
L bit 2 (195 nH) 204 0 ok
L bit 3 (400 nH) 108 0 ok
L bit 4 (800 nH) 60 0 ok
L bit 5 (1600 nH) 36 0 ok
L bit 6 (3200 nH) 24 0 ok
L bit 7 (6800 nH) 18 0 ok

C2 bit 0 (RL16, 10 pF) 782 0 ok
C2 bit 1 (RL15, 20 pF) 396 0 ok
C2 bit 2 (RL14, 40 pF) 204 0 ok
C2 bit 3 (RL13, 78 pF) 108 0 ok
C2 bit 4 (RL12, 164 pF) 60 0 ok
C2 bit 5 (RL11, 300 pF) 36 0 ok
C2 bit 6 (RL10, 660 pF) 24 0 ok
C2 bit 7 (RL9, 1320 pF) 18 0 ok

THE ANTENNA SWITCH MODULE

POSITION COMMANDED CONFIRMED FAILED LINK LOST
ANT 1 1 1 0 0
ANT 2 1 0 1 0
first failed on cycle 1
ANT 3 1 0 1 0
first failed on cycle 1

THE STATE RELAYS

STATE COMMANDED CONFIRMED FAILED NOT REPORTED
OPERATE 1 1 0 0
BYPASS 1 1 0 0
STANDBY 1 1 0 0

Tom Porada

I use a Windows 11 pro computer and the report file is not in the directory with the .py executable. A mystery!

Tom W4IEE

WX7Y

It doesn't create a desktop Icon here either on WIN 11 Pro, if I go into to the AppData\local\N7HQ Labs directory and create a shortcut to the desktop it runs fine, Just the BAT file doesn't finish the job of putting the py on the Desktop it looks like.

Thank a lot Dan

73

Bret WX7Y

Dan-N7HQ

Thanks for the reports!!

Here is v1.1.0 with three fixes, and an apology for the ANT rows.

If your report showed ANT 2 / ANT 3 "FAILED": that was my bug, not your switch. The tool was reading the wrong field. On a 3WAY there is only one radio channel, so the field I was checking sits at 1 forever - ANT 1
matched it by luck and the other two never could. The ANT 1 "pass" was just as meaningless; the tool never actually watched any of the three move. Nothing in those reports says anything about your antenna relays.
If they switch fine in normal use, they are fine.

v1.1.0 now works out how your particular tuner reports its switch position before it grades anything - it commands a position the tuner is not on and watches which field follows. If it finds one, everything gets
checked properly (this also auto-fixes units that report it under a different name). If it finds nothing, the positions come back UNCONFIRMED instead of FAILED, because "I could not see it" is not "it did not happen". The report now also prints the tuner's raw status, so if yours still cannot be read, I can fix it from the report without a back-and-forth.

Tom (W4IEE) - the missing report file. It was written, just not where you were looking: the Desktop shortcut runs the tool from its install folder and puts reports in a Reports subfolder there. My fault for printing only the filename. It now prints the full path when it finishes, so you cannot lose one.

Bret (WX7Y) - no desktop icon. Almost certainly OneDrive: with folder backup on, your real Desktop is OneDrive\Desktop, and the installer was writing to the old location. Worse, it ignored the failure and told you
it had made the icon anyway. It now asks Windows where your Desktop actually is, checks the shortcut exists, and if it cannot make one it says so and tells you exactly which file to start (which is what you had already figured out). It also offers to open the install folder at the end.

One thing worth saying: the tuning-network half of these reports was right all along. I re-checked the counts against the tool's own model and they match exactly - the C1/L/C2 ladders followed every one of ~2,350 commands with zero misses on every unit that has reported back. That is a genuinely clean result.

Windows may warn about the .bat file when you download it - it is not signed. Unzip it and run Install-Windows.bat from the unpacked folder.

73,
Dan

TGXL-Relay-Exercise-1.1.0.zip

Dewey WØYWW

my install placed the executable file in the Start menu ("TGXL Relay Exercise") which is located in C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. from which I copied it to my desktop.

Gord-VA7GP

Thank you @Dan-N7HQ! For the Antenna Switch, I now see your explanation and also 3x "Commanded" and 3x "Unconfirmed".

My TGXL has never been so exercised!! a huge "thanks"!

Russ Ravella

Thanks for this, Dan - it's great !

73 Russ KR6W

Lars Pettersson

It works good the TGXL sounded lika a machine gun :-)

/Lars SM4IVE