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| Reviews Summary for LDG Z-11Pro Memory Autotuner |
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Reviews: 45
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Average rating: 4.4/5
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MSRP: $179
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Description: The return of the popular Z-11 in a Pro version with increased RF power capacity and more memories. 0.1 to 125 watts (100W on 6M). 8000 3-D memories store up to 4 antenna settings per frequency, SWR indicator, internal battery capable, latching relays, SSB tuning and 160 thru 6 meter coverage.
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More info: http://www.ldgelectronics.com
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write your own review of the LDG Z-11Pro Memory Autotuner.
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CT2FPE
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 19, 2008 18:16
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Top ATU
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I´ve been using this ATU for sometime, on the shack and on mobile, it´s very easy to use and for knowing it better you should read the manual.
I´ve got some problems at 1st and the support from LDG was very fast and acurate. The issue was faulty ground, I manage to solve it.
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WA6MOW
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Rating: 5/5
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Nov 23, 2008 17:28
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great tuner, great company.
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I love this tuner. I managed to burn it up through stupidity and the LDG people repaired it at no charge! In conjunction with an LDG balun, the antenna configurations are endless. I highly recommend the LDG tuners.
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KD0JBN
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 29, 2008 08:25
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One antenna several bands
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I've been working HF for just about a year now and have had the LDG tuner for about 8 months. For the first four month I was working HF I was only able to run 20 meters since that is what my inverted V is cut for. After I put the Z-11 Pro on, I've been able to work 10, 15, 20, 40 & 80 with no problems. Don't know if it will work with any other bands since I'm using a Ten Tec Scout and those are the modules I have. Overall though it has perfomed as advertised in that it tunes quickly and once it's tuned to a frequency it will remember the settings and go to those settings next time you are on that frequency. It definitely has a lot of bang for the buck.
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K5AF
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 7, 2008 08:42
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Impressed
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I received my Z-11 Pro and had it unpacked, batteries installed and making QSOs within 20 minutes. I remoted mine to the back yard to tune my inverted L. The antenna is about 55' long and it tunes up very nicely and easily on all bands from 80M thru 10M with an SWR below 1.3 to 1 on all bands. I ran it hard for a couple hours of hours at 120W, thinking that if there was a problem with the component ratings that I would likely notice some heat on the case. It ran as cool as a cucumber!
Nice little tuner, it should run for a long time on the installed batteries, I'll report back in a few months.
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N0UL
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Rating: 5/5
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Aug 20, 2008 10:17
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Great Service
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I recently had to return my Z11Pro tuner for repairs. I had it back, problems resolved, within 2 weeks. The quick personal response was great. The tuner works better than new with the new firmware upgrade and replaced parts.
This kind of service is not the normal anymore with many manufacturers but it is with LDG. If you want to buy a product with good service backing it up make sure your first consideration is LDG.
This tuner has meet all my expectations and more. I now use it with a Yaesu FT-450AT and am forgoing the internal tuner for the LDG tuner because of the excellent performance of the Z11Pro.
Kudos to LDG!
Jim N0UL
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VE2EZD
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Rating: 5/5
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Aug 10, 2008 15:50
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It's now working as I expected
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I bought mine two years ago after reading a lot about it. I liked the way LDG designed its memory system to save its tuning data according to the frequency and band.
I had a big problem with my Z-11 pro. It was easily able to reach a match but, when I began to talk, it constantly tried to retune on my voice peaks. Even by rising the SWR threshold the tuner was always and annoyingly trying to retune whatever I did to make him "learn" my antenna.
I then discovered something that could be the source of my problem. When I opened the case I realized that the cover is insulated from the rest of the case. I mean, the cover is painted black inside and out. The screws are painted black and so is the bottom of the case. Could the problem with my tuner be as simple as this? I took a piece of sandpaper and began to remove all the paint where the metal parts are getting into contact. I putted it back together and then the miracle occured. It work as expected!
Its amazing to see how fast it tunes after it "learned" the antenna. I'm no more able to "fool" it anymore.
Good job LDG but please try to keep that box RF tight!
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KK8ZZ
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 22, 2008 15:22
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Great with Zero-Five Vertical
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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Use this with my 33 foot Zero-Five vertical (with radials, of course) and it tunes within quarter-seconds, it seems. Quick, effective, efficient. It's a keeper !
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KD8EZU
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 6, 2008 09:52
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impressive ,works, made in USA ( Maryland )
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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I have owned my Z-11Pro for a little over 3 months.It is used with a Yaesu FT-857D, a G5RV, and a homebrew 160 meter antenna . I bought the LDG 4:1 balun for the 160 meter, and any other antenna that would require use of a balun. My unit came with a cable that interfaces with the 857D and perhaps other rigs .Using this cable, the 857D automatically will go into low power ( less than 10 Watts) while tuning in auto or manual mode. A simple cable, sure, but it was nice that LDG included it. I replaced the thin coax patch cable that LDG included with thicker coax. No complaint about the thiness and it was thoughtful ( once again ) that LDG included it so that a new owner could be up and running instantly.
Taking the cover off this small unit, revealed to me that the unit is well made and it has a clean uncluttered circuit board. Everything is bolted and screwed down well. I have wired in a AAA battery holder for future use , and the AAA battery holder fits easily inside. I used Clear Silicone sealer (for aquariums ? ) to hold it in place.
Hooking up to the FT-857D was easy and the unit is smaller than the 857D so it stacks well . It will slide so use small squares of double-sided tape or a velcro strap to secure it. The instructions are clear and there is no language abberations from the American to English translation! You really must read the instructions to fully enjoy the benefits of this little unit.
As others have contributed. Do a pre-tuning on each band you plan to use and space out the frequency in 400Khz increments while tuning. I did this for each antenna and the unit does indeed "remember" where it was tuned. I also recommend setting the SWR threshold to 1:1.7 or 1:2 to prevent the Z-11Pro from auto-tuning at times. Once you've done the above, and have the unit on AUTO , you'll be amazed how quickly this unit tunes. If your radio does not have the ability to interface with the Z-11Pro directly via a cable ( FT-875D, 897D ,and maybe others) you need to pay attention to tuning while in LOW power to prevent damage to the relays and innards of the tuner.
With my G5RV, and the 80-160m homebrew antenna, I've used the Z-11PRO sucessfully to tune from 6-meters down to 1.880Mhz. I could not tune below 1.880 because, quite frankly, the homebrew antenna still needs trimming. What happens at 1.880Mhz, is that the Z-11Pro will go into an extended tune then stop.At all other frequencies it takes less that a second ( I kid you not ) to tune - ONCE YOU'VE DONE A PRE-TUNE BEFOREHAND.
One warning:
LDG and others DO NOT recommend the Z-11Pro to be used with the Yaesu 857D because ( alledgedly ) there is a small RF leak from 857D's UHF/VHF coax plug ( the 857D has two, one for HF and the other for VHF/UHF )and this will cause the Z-IIPro to start an auto-tune . This will happen EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT PHYSICALLY CONNECTED to the UHF/VHF antenna connector.
My own experience is that on 2-meters the RF leak ( if there is indeed a leak ) apparently does not cause the unit to initiate an auto-tune BUT at 70cm it will. Since the Z-11PRO is not designed to tune 2-meter or 70cm and is not connected physically to the 857D's coax connector for those Freq's the solution is simple......power off the Z-11Pro when using 440Mhz with a FT-857D!
The FT-857D is the only Transciever known that does this and the solution is so simple, and the Z-11Pro works so well.., that I'd still recommend it's use for FT-857D owners. For everyone else, its a non-issue.
In closing, let me state that this little auto-tuner is compact, very well made, will tune just about any antenna, and is simple to operate.
Read the instructions first, DO NOT TUNE AT HIGH POWER, and be aware of the FT-857D 440Mhz issue ( debatable and your experience may be different than mine) .
It is truly refreshing to see how well this Maryland based manufacturer has msde this unit. I'm proud to own and support this made in the USA product.
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WU1E
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Rating: 5/5
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May 17, 2008 09:35
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I'm really impressed. $ well spent.
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I'm a little shocked at how well this works. I was debating whether to get the the z11 pro or the at200. I certainly don't regret "settling" for the z11pro.
For about 2 months I had been using an MFJ-949D grounded to a cold water pipe with a Cobra Ultralite Sr. dipole. Once I ironed out a couple of issues that setup worked pretty well. Changing bands as well as small QSY's were pretty tedious if just jumping into a conversation or a pileup was desired before I could tune up properly though.
Once I received the Z11 I quickly read the manual (novel concept among many of us hi hi), set the default auto tune threshold to 1.5 and decided to do the teaching process for the heck of it. I had already had some issues when using the MFJ combined with a w2au balun and a short coax jumper. The ldg was no different so I put back in the same longer length of coiled up coax used with the MFJ and all is well. Wow, really cool! Yes it makes noise when tuning, but once you have a bunch of tuner settings saved in memory you usually only hear one quick click when qsying. Hopping from freq to freq and band to band are now effortless. If I park on a freq for awhile there are many times when I can easily brush up the tune manually using the buttons if I want to see 1.00 on my digital swr meter instead of slightly higher (1.00 is pretty common during auto tune anyway). Hardly necessary but its easy and fun to do.
Now, I did have one thing happen that concerned me but I will chalk it up to operator error and some strange phenomenon with my setup. I noticed that for some reason the tuner would hunt when I would talk on 75/80 meters. Uh oh, I remembered other reviews mentioning something like this. Oddly enough it only would happen when I talked on SSB on 75/80. I could whistle, throw a 120 watt carrier and it would be fine. Talk normal and it would start tuning. Weird. However I just raised the tuner threshold to 1.7 SWR and the problem went away. I also noticed that in order to go into tuner bypass mode you have to be in semi auto tune mode and not in auto where I usually leave it.
This really is a cool toy and IMO the price seems to cheap especially considering what a middle of the road manual tuner goes for.
Enjoy !!
73 de WU1E
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NO9E
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 24, 2008 13:08
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Finally a good tuner
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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This is a second review. Before, a relay fried when tuning on 6m but LDG repaired the tuner and probably updated the firmware.
My main application is portable with random wire elements. The tuner and the radio are connected by RG174 looped 10 times through a large toroid. Antenna wires are connected directly to the tuner; any balun I used before that was connected directly to antenna wires was warm or hot on some bands.
The tuner is in the automatic mode. Tuning is initiated by transmitting in AM mode. Tuning has been reliable as the range is as good as in a better manual tuner, unlike Z100. Once tuned, the tuner does not retune when transmitting, unlike Z100.
Good range and no false retuning create new opportunities for portable work. The tuner can be left outside, for example on a balcony. It can be connected to the radio outside via 10-20ft of RG174 (looped on a toroid close to the tuner). This cable would take little space yet loss would be minimal as the cable would be used under low SWR. Z11PRO+GPS1+IC7000+cables = 100W at < 10lb.
The only beef is that the tuner does not return reliably to previously tuned positions with a dot or dah; it needs a longer signal.
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