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write your own review of the Icom AT-130.
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KG4LJB
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Rating: 4/5
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Jun 9, 2008 09:08
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Works well - once you understand it's requirements
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I repair marine electronic equipment for a living, so I have the advantage of being very familiar with this unit. It is a capable tuner if you observe the following measures: Give it a better than average ground. Use a choke balun to reduce shield radiation. Use a antenna of at least 35 feet.
My system consists of a 75' random wire, 3 - 6 ' copper ground rods, connected to the tuner with copper strap, and 5 ground radials of various lengths (more to come). There is also a connection to my Grumman aluminum canoe - just for good measure!
Getting it to play with non - Icom radios is possible, but probably not in a fully automatic sense. You have to manually start the tuning process for any new frequency. I have successfully interfaced it to my Kenwood TS-440S, making only minor, easily reversible modifications. Now when I press the "voice" button (that is normally used for the voice synthesizer option - not installed) the tuner begins it process. If you want the technical details, send me a email.
andros2112 at yahoo.com
In a nutshell, you briefly ground the "start" line, the unit responds by pulling the "key" line low. This line needs to be connected to your radio in a way that causes it to go into the transmit mode, and produce about 10 - 15 watts of rf - NOT full TX power! If all antenna and ground requirements are met, the tuner will find a match pretty fast.
My only beef is the unit's inability to tune a balanced antenna. By design, it wants to end feed a random wire. Sadly, it is not compatible with a balun...
Someday, If I ever find the time, I may try to suspend my AT-130 from the feed point of a dipole.
Should be a interesting experiment.
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VK2JNA
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Rating: 2/5
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Apr 4, 2006 21:05
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AT-130 to non-Icom
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I'm having a devil of a time getting this tuner to talk with a Barrett 550 marine HF radio. The AT-130 manual is very skimpy. Has anyone else had any luck getting the AT-130 to match up with a (non-Icom) Marine HF radio?
Getting the AT-130 to autotune when it sees a new carrier seems impossible. It appears it needs to also "be told" with a switch. Unacceptable in a marine HF system.
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VK3JLB
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Rating: 4/5
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Feb 23, 2003 08:47
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Let down by poor documentation
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I recently got my brand new AT-130 working. I purchased the unit while I was on holiday so I'd be forced to read through the manual for a few days before trying to hook it up.
As I'm using it on a non-Icom radio (An SG-2020), I was aware of the requirement to build an interface box. I've ended up with a little black box that attaches to the top of the radio and has a 'tune' button. This causes the SG-2020 to emit a carrier and triggers the AT-130 to start a tune cycle, sending the CW signal for as long as the tune cycle requires.
My main gripe is the manual. It seems to gloss over the requirements if it is not connected to an Icom HF set. The pain that I experienced was the "start" input. The manual says words to the effect of "Voltage input to trigger the start of the tuning cycle. Normally 8 Volts, when less than 1 volt is recieved a tune cycle will commence".
What it really means is "ground this input if you want it to start tuning". As its a commercial unit and unlikely to be connected to a non-icom HF set, I can see why this has gone undetected. Still, a bit of a let down.
After some dramas rigging up an antenna (mainly a height issue), the unit appears to work well. When tuning the same frequency twice, it is all over in less than a second. For a new frequency, it takes between 2 and 10 seconds. Usually closer to 2.
It only takes a couple of watts of RF to figure out what to do. I normally turn my 2020 down to 2-3 watts which is plenty.
The main benefit of the '130 is cost. Much cheaper than the Barrett (SGC), Codan (?) or importing an SGC tuner.
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