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| Reviews Summary for CG-3000 Automatic Antenna Tunner 10 - 200 WATT .PEP |
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Reviews: 19
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Average rating: 4.7/5
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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
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write your own review of the CG-3000 Automatic Antenna Tunner 10 - 200 WATT .PEP.
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EB3BRJ
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Rating: 5/5
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Nov 11, 2009 00:40
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I´m quite pleased
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I has purchased a Maldol MFB-300II antenna. This antenna has a coil in the base that connects with a 7 meters fiber glass whip through a T SO-239 adapter. I added a 10 meters radial.
I wasn´t very pleased with this antenna performance.
Compared with my other vertical antenna (Diamond CP-6) the reception was between 15 and 10 dB lower. However, the whip base is installed about 8 feet lower that the CP-6 base.
However I have to say that the whip is very well made and resistant and has the nice detail that it has a SO-239 connector, that allows the use of the whip only without the coil.
I bought a CG-3000 and installed it on the base of the whip. I left the radial installed.
The difference I have to say it is huge. Now Rx compared to the other vertical antenna is between 12 dB higher that the CP6 in 80 meters and 6 dB higher in 15 meters.
The only problem I found is that in 10 meters I ned to power off the unit for it to be able to properly tune.
The performance is excellent and I strongly recommend this set-up for people with limitations on the type of antenna they can install on QTH.
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JR3TVH
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 24, 2009 08:07
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I felt an exact advantage
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have been used many outdoor automatic antenna tuner(ATU) tested in some remote islands, restiricted fields, at apartments balconies for decades,I can mention to this ATU's that has one of the the fastest tuning systems , uses high voltage capacities, relays,coils so this tuner has been given me every high performance in any field in any conditions, and this has accomodated itself even to resonate the required f0. I and my friends feel that CG-3000 can respond somewhat wider range of antenna's impedance.
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G8JNJ
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Rating: 5/5
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Feb 23, 2009 03:57
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Does exactly what it says on the box
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I have been using one of these for over a year to feed a variety of antennas and it has worked flawlessly. In fact I’ve just bought a second one for further experimentation, as it permits very quick setups of new antennas without having to worry about getting the match exactly right.
The unit tunes random length wires or balanced antennas if you add an external choke balun.
One extra bonus is that it will work on 6m (with a reduced matching range). However there is a slight amount of RFI from the internal control board on this band, which is noticeable if the antenna is mounted too close to the ATU. I believe the latest models have additional internal screening which should reduce this to a negligible level.
As with all random wire tuners of this type it is important to avoid wire lengths which are ½ wavelength long (or multiples) on the frequencies of interest, as this results in very high feed impedance and a high voltage at the feed point. Aim for a wire length which presents a moderate impedance load on all the desired frequencies for best results.
Loss through the unit seems to be low when compared against a good quality manual tuner, even when operating on 160m with electrically short (9m long - low R high X) wire antennas.
Highly recommended for use with 100w HF/6m rigs.
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PD2JHP
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 1, 2008 11:15
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Great tuner for a nice price!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Dear radiofriends,
I use this tuner with a non-resonant horizontal longwire (54 feet long) at my QTH which is situated about 16.5 feet BELOW sea-level!
It tunes without any problems on all bands from 10 to 40 metres (I am still a novice but having examn for my general soon).
I have had a lot of nice contacts with other enthusiatic ham operators all over the world and with excellent reports !
(just with 25 legal watts).
It works as good as others wrote and I am looking forward to use it as a vertical during the 10-metres ARRL contest on a 43 feet fishing rod in my small backyard!
Tip:
use as much radials as you can handle! I have a ground rod of 10 feet and for every ham band (10-20-40 metres) four radials of 1/4 lambda and this is working very well!
See you on the frequency soon !
Greetings from Holland (Europe),
Jan
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WD4ELG
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 16, 2008 23:02
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Flawless
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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See my separate review on the ZeroFive 43 foot multibander vertical, which is what I am using with my CG-3000.
Jay and the fine folks at Array Solutions helped me with the purchase of the Zero Five antenna. With Tom's superb guidance from Zero Five, and discussions with Bob and Jay at Array Solutions, I realized that a quality antenna matching device was needed. Knowing that I need every dB of my 100 watts going INTO the antenna for optimum DX results, I decided on an actual tuner at the base of the radiator rather than an impedance matcher in the shack for fooling the rig but wasting power in the coax.
Folks, this IS the way to go. Get the adapters from Array Solutions which let you run 12V through the coax, it does not get any simpler.
The CG-3000 unit itself is truly a black box, literally. I hooked it up in 10 min (with idiot-proof instructions from Array Solutions). It just works! Put 10W into it and it tunes in a snap, under 2 seconds in all cases. It has memory for frequencies, which is nice. Mounts on the Zero Five 43 foot vertical base plate. Makes a nice mate to the vertical.
Two weeks after I got it and I am cranking out the DX with my 100 watts. Now that I have the CG-3000, no way would I ever want to try matching any other way. Kudos to Array Solutions for an outstanding sale and terrific support.
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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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