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| Reviews Summary for CG-3000 Automatic Antenna Tunner 10 - 200 WATT .PEP |
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Reviews: 14
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Average rating: 4.6/5
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MSRP: $$320
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Description: CG3000 Automatic Antenna Tunner.Covers all HAM bands from 1.8-30 Mhz Continuously.It can fit long wire, mobile whip, vertical antenna, dipole antenna(without balun), etc
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More info: http://www.cgantenna.com/cg3000.html
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You can
write your own review of the CG-3000 Automatic Antenna Tunner 10 - 200 WATT .PEP.
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M0SVA
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Rating: 5/5
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Aug 9, 2008 17:15
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Down to Earth price. Excellent performance!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I live in an area of England where masts and other tall structures are out of the question. It's regarded as an area of outstanding natural beauty. Hence, I struggle to do what I can do with the existing trees of my kind neighbours who generously allow me to use the space over their gardens and their trees for my not so stealth wires, bless their kind hearts!
Have had the CG-3000 for about two years, bought it on eBay, new for about £110.oo (more or less US $220). It came sealed in its brown box, with all the parts properly packed and a "Manual" on a few A4 sheets of paper with basic instructions, no suggestions or schematics.
It stands on a fiberglass mast from a surfboard that I got at the local dump for £1.oo. The automatic tuner has been standing there exposed to the elements, be it winter or hot summer intense sunlight that has faded its label a bit. And that's all that has happened to it! The tuner has been working fine day after day, night after night, year after year.
Will work with any of my transceivers, needs NO CONTROL cable to work absolutely fine. Will tune my 20m dipole to any band from 160m to 10m, no issues whatsoever!
It honestly does what it says, and lately I have got it to tune a ladder-line fed 20m dipole, again with no issues at all on ANY HF band.
I read of a few users who have had a few minor insignificant issues. Perhaps for peace of mind it could be a good idea to buy from the company's distributors and then we are covered by the warranty!
Find the distributors list at
http://www.cgantenna.com/ then click on Contact which will take you to all the distributors.
I used to have the SG-230 up to 2002. Another great tuner ("coupler" as SGC terms it). However, when I relocated, everything was sold away to support relevant expenses, so there went the SGC.
They both need the same minimum length of wire (about 8 feet) and tuned the same span of frequencies, 1.8-30 MHz. They both require slightly less than 1A at about 13 V, with the Chinese CG being slightly more economical at <0.8A and the SGC at 0.9A (with RF present).
The list of similarities goes on and on. And there are amazing similarities with the MFJ-926 sold at much more...compare their specs and "Manuals".
(http://www.mfjenterprises.com/man/pdf/MFJ-926.pdf
and
http://www.cgantenna.be/cg3000N.pdf)
Only difference I could spot was some mm in the box dimensions.
However, when it comes to possible tuning combinations, the SGC will come up with about 1/2 million, whereas the CG with about 1/4 million combinations.
Perhaps this means that the CG does less fine tuning steps, a bit of rounding up or down, hi-hi.
Would I pay about 3 times more (300% up) to get these finer tuning steps? So far, I don't think so. Maybe with the money saved, I can easily buy a second CG tuner and have it for portable operations, when on holiday or, even mobile, put it in the boot and forget about it!
However the CG, will not retain the tuning settings once the power has been disconnected, as a matter of fact, this is how you reset it! Say you have the tuner at the bottom of a tree or tower and you power it up with a battery. Once the battery is gone, there goes the tuning!
This could perhaps be remedied in the next version of the factory, but as it usually happens, this upgrade will bring upgrade the price too!
Have a look at its innards at Array Solutions:
http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/cg_3000.htm
Unfortunately the League has not yet put the CG on their test bench like they did with the SGC-230.
Also, it would be very interesting to see at what (RF) cost the tuning is done, how much % loss we have per band for say 100 W and SWR 3:1, especially at the low bands.
As long as the losses are quite lower than a mismatched antenna fed with coax at the same band, that is very good !
In our relevantly expensive hobby, it is a fresh air of relief to see good, very handy gadgets, for as little money as the CG, so well done CG!
I would recommend it with confidence.
73 to all stations de
MØSVA
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OH3WE
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Rating: 3/5
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Aug 6, 2008 09:10
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Watch out!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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In addition to my previous positive review, I'd like to state that the ground post of CG-3000 has a poor design.
When you screw the ground nut tight -with normal force- the bolt starts spinning.
I had to open up the case (perhaps voiding the warranty) and found that there is nothing to prevent the bolt from turning freely. Just a blob of silicone putty for waterproofing purposes, I guess.
When the bolt turns it will twist the braided ground strap round and round until it tightens enough and breaks.
I fixed it by adding a star washer under the bolt's hex head, a new layer of silicone and an extra ***tight*** nut on the outside of the case.
Now it works like dream again.
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WX0B
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 14, 2008 18:06
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Excellent product
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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We have been using the CG-3000 with a Zero-Five 43 foot vertical on 160-10m for several months now and found no problems at all. This baby will take the full output of a TS-480 200W PA all day long in contests. The previous poster must have some RF issues or other problems he is not aware of. Perhaps he should even consider using his warranty and having the manufacturer look it over.
But he has a great idea about powering the unit through coax. I think we will do this!
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OH3WE
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Rating: 3/5
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Jul 14, 2008 13:44
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A useful piece of equipment
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Bought this nice tuning aid some weeks ago. It really seems to match random lengths of wire, metal tubes and even a (wired) fishing rod to match a 30 metre length of coax. It needs a proper radial network or counterpoise or good conducting ground, however.
It even tunes my 30-metre high antenna tower when shunt-fed to a tap at 12 metre height.
Due to summer and long day time here in Scandinavia I have had no change to chase low-band DX's with such a vertical.
One disadvantage is that one needs to use a separate heavy-gauge power lead to supply the CG-3000. It would have been easy to include a power supply unit in the shack end and use coax instead of a dedicated cable in the first place.
In some occasions the tuner doesn't tune at all. It leaves the L/C combination in such state that its own microprocessor noise radiates to the antenna cable. I also need to cut its power for a while to reset the thing...
A best combination was a L-type of wire antenna.
CG-3000 is a nice toy to have but I could also live without it.
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ON4VP
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 17, 2008 11:24
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Makes it all possible
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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On one word: what a great product. I bought this tuner with several purposes in mind. I'm temporary working dx without directional antennas and I needed a multiband solution to setup a dx antenna. I started mounting a 15ft support mast and I mounted a 33ft fibermast on top. Inside the mast runs the 33ft wire. The wire is connected to the CG-3000 tuner at 15ft abouve ground. I attached 6 elevated 33ft radials sloping down to almost 8ft. The radials are isolated and are also used to hold the mast.
The setup works as 5/8 antenne on 17m and 1/2 on 20m and 1/4 on 40 meters. The CG-3000 matches ALL bands from 160 meters up to 6 meters without hesitation and SWR is better than 1.2/1 on all bands (1:1 in most cases). I get very good results with this antenna.
I've worked lot of DX (even now sunspot numbers are low) on 17,20,30 and 40 meters. Top bands are closed but I managed to work nice 6 meter FM contacts and repeaters. Also 80 works pretty decent and I can work European stations on 160 to.
I'm very pleased with the results running only 200 watts from my TS-480HX. The CG-3000 handles 200 watt just fine in SSB and 150 in CW. It tunes fast and keeps a very good match in windy conditions.
I would buy this tuner again without hesitation. It is a great product. I owned SG-230 and other models, but prefer this tuner. It's faster, smaller and works better imho. It is mounted outside. I recommend the CG-3000 to users who like fast and easy setup of multiband operation.
I've experimented with different vertical settings. You can look at some photo's on my most recent setup at: http://picasaweb.google.be/philippe.vandekerckhove/33ftMultibandVertical
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ON4VP
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 7, 2007 03:57
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Superb and 1/2 price SGC
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I've owned two SG-230, a SG-211 and an SG-237 porta. None of these couplers are as quick as the CG-3000 and the CG-3000 does match things the SG-230 can't handle. Even more, it keep's the match locked in varying conditions where all my SGC tuners lost controle and had to re-engaged.
Looking at the nice zerofive multiband vertical antenne, I knew this had to be the starting point to mount the CG-3000. At this moment I have 16 radials at ground level (will be 60 pcs real soon) and mounted the CG-3000 just on top. The antenna is a 2,5mm wire about 40ft long next to a fiberpole antennamast by Spiderbeam.
This combination "rocks". I can work dx on all bands and I'm impressed on the results. The CG-3000 tunes fast, keeps its match and does all bands from 80 to 10 meters (I can't use 160 or 6 meters on my TS130S).
The finish is good and the product is watersealed. The CG-3000 consumes less than the SG-230 and is happy with as much as 11,5 volts. It can handle 200 watts pep and long runs at 100 watts CW is also handled very well.
This great product works fantastic and that at half the price of the comparable SGC products. CG Antennas recently announced a 800 watt pep model (CG-5000) togheter wiht a new 800 watt pep linear.
Even the 800 watt tuner is reasonable priced. I really recommend this product and give it a solid 5/5.
If you like to see pictures of my antenna + tuner setup, mail me at on4vp@edpnet.be
Catch you on th air.
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ON4CCU
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 25, 2007 02:24
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Exceeds expectations
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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I use this tuner to feed a non-resonant vertical (some 11 meters of wire taped to a fiber pole), with three random length elevated radials.
It tunes without any problems on all bands from 160 to 10 meters. On-air results of this set-up have been very good, and really seems to shine on 40, 20 and 17. I still have an R7 on the roof, which is on average 2 S-points down from the "random length vertical" both TX and RX.
The tuner itself is very well built and tunes fast. And this for the price of a used SGC or Icom...
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F5TIL
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 24, 2007 15:47
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SUPER PRODUCT.
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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Hello,
I use this CG-3000 tuner with 30 meters inverted L on my Spiderbeam fibreglass pole and i'm very happy,I can use this antenna from 1.8 to 50 mhz with good results.
This tuner is perfect !!!
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SV1EEX
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Rating: 5/5
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May 20, 2007 09:49
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Excellent performer for the money
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I didn't believe my ears that I could tune my old cb antenna +3m extension on 160m for fun with 4 10m radials. I didn't work dx yet but got descent reports from EU. With 17m long wire it booms.
Also although not stated in the manual it works ufb in 6m band. Worked 14 dxcc entities already in one month in 6m with my modified vertical.
I suspect that the efficiency is lower than the one on the other bands that's why it is not advertised as a 6m tuner also.
The only con is that during my last years dxpedition in Falconera isl. the female connector got loose and slipped off the coaxial so i had to press it agn.
It is really vy waterproof (resisted on salty water conditions) and showed exceptional tuning speed unequal to other tuners i have already tested (ah4/mfj/sgc230/sv1nl's hm etc) and although I found the above minor construction defect I recommend it 100% for the price/efficiency/speed that outperforms anything I have already tested.
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MM0BHX
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 9, 2007 11:39
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First Class !
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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I've used the CG-3000 for about 4 months now and found it to be exceptionally good.
When it was first delivered I thought I would give it a quick try using a length of wire, stretching from the shack window to a bush in the garden ( Wire approx 7m long, ave height 2.5m ). The results were exceptional, in fact so good I haven't got round to putting up the long wire I had originally planned.
I would recommend this unit to anyone.
( P.S. My fellow contestors call this wire/tuner my DX-Tiddler !! )
Tom MM0BHX
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