6600 ATU

Graham J Smith · February 21

Having searched the manual and forum I am still not convinced I can find an answer.
My 6600 is controlled by my Maestro and I do have ATU mem enabled BUT I still need to press the ATU button after every QSY even to a frequency recently used and tuned. Sometimes the radio seems to need a very long time to achieve a match. I now routinely hit the tune button a few kHz away so I can see whether I need to re-hit the ATU button... I regularly do. I have done a reset and have gone up the band matching every 10kHz ... but this has not helped.
Maestro SW 3.1.12.18
Flex 6600 with ATU HW 3.1.12.51
v3.1.12
10 months of ownership from new ... only recently taken plunge to get to grips with the radio... so about 3 months use.
On other radios (recent models) the ATU just tunes when needed without me needing to force a tune. My flex seems to be semi-auto in that although I am not tweaking L & C controls I am "manually" tuning.
What am I missing?
Thanks
Graham G4NMD

Neil D Friedman N3DF · February 21

What antenna are you using? What are typical SWRs without the tuner?

VE7ATJ_Don · February 21

Hi Graham... there are known problems with the ATU firmware/software in v3 of SSDR (as well as 2.6x). As I understand it, they changed the algorithm around 2.x and are in the process of rolling out a fix. 2.4.10 is the latest version with the 'old' ATU software which seems to be the most stable right now.

If you're not willing to downgrade (understandably) then hang on... from what I read in Gerald's note recently, a new version of 3.x with updated ATU software/firmware is on the way.

Graham J Smith · February 21

Don
Many thanks that is helpful and reassuring ... mainly because I was trying to work out if I was being "dumb"... probably am but learning! When I was first licensed you had to tune the TX finals into a dummy load then tweak the atu/amu ... now I complain because I have to touch one button!!
Thanks for taking the time to comment ... appreciated

G

Graham J Smith · February 21

Neil
At this particular time a series of resonant dipoles ... the 80m and 40m ones are 1.2ish to 1 3760 and 7160 with inevitable worsening LF and at band edges... so not too great a mismatch. What I am not fully on top of is what the electrical length of the coax feeder is .... so antennas could be / will be better BUT they are not that bad and it has been similar on the hex beam too.
My gut is that I am expecting it to behave like the ATU in my previous TS-990 et al.
It sounds like from other comments there are some potential issues and fixes.
73

G

Pat_W5WTH · February 22

"Within spec. Ship it."

(this, uh.... feature, doesn't work on my 6400 either.)

VE7ATJ_Don · February 24

No worries, Graham.. when I started in ham radio, you had to peak the grid current, then dip the plate and repeat :-) No such thing as 'automatic antenna tuners'!

Quite a bit different world now....

6600 ATU

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