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Reviews For: MFJ-994BRT TUNER, AUTO, REMOTE, 600W, 1.8-30 MHZ

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : MFJ-994BRT TUNER, AUTO, REMOTE, 600W, 1.8-30 MHZ
Reviews: 31MSRP: 399.95
Description:
Remote IntelliTuner is mounted in a durable hard plastic case that measures 9 ¼" x 3" x 14 ¼". Covers 1.8 to 30 MHz, have heavy duty 16 Amp / 1000 Volt relays and are a highly efficient L-network. It also includes the MFJ-4117 BiasTee Power Injector to send DC/RF down your coax.
Handles 600 Watts SSB/CWpower level and is said to matche 12-800 Ohm antennas.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-994BRT
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00313.1
W5MBG Rating: 2011-11-21
Good, not great Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Recently purchased this remote autotuner to pair with my 43' vertical. My vertical has 18 53' radials, and is adequately tuned by a tuner at my rig. However, it's always better to drive the antenna at its base, so I opted for this unit.
Upon trying to hook it up, the first thing I noticed was that the flange for the upper weatherproof cover was covering the SO-239 connector, and it was impossible to screw an antenna connector on to the unit. Bad design. So I had to clip the plastic flange a bit to make room for the connector.
Second - let's hook it up and turn it on! After hooking up the dc/rf "BiasTee" unit, I found a trustee 12v/1A transformer and did indeed verify that the voltage was getting to the unit. But the unit wouldn't tune. In fact, nothing happened - no relays clicking, nothing. Time to troubleshoot. A call to MFJ was absolutely no help.
The unit itself has 8 tiny non-captive screws securing the top and bottom of the weatherproof box. Not a good design and makes it difficult to work on if the unit was mounted.
So I opened up the unit to discover the "control board" is mounted upside down with the much needed reset and control buttons facing the motherboard. Bad design. So I searched the instructions for a map for the buttons, but there was none, only a verbal description of each button's functions.

Once open, I had to remove the small board and visibly look at the buttons (the instructions even tell you this). When I did this I realized that the ribbon cable which connects the two boards had actually touched the power button and in fact switched the unit off, probably while it was being shipped. Another poor design. I turned the unit on and presto, it worked.
As far as results, it tunes ok 6-40 meters. The impedence at 80 on my 43' vertical is just too low for the unit (my modeling says it's around 5 ohms) so you can't have everything. SWR can be as high as 2:1 at my radio on some bands but that's still well within an acceptable range.
As for performance, once I got through all the manufacturing glitches, it actually works nicely. There are times when I need to turn the power module off and then on to reset the unit, but that's rare. There might be some manual tweaks I could make on the control board to better the SWR on some bands, but I haven't measured it yet at the antenna so I can't say how it is really performing.
Receive and transmit performance have been good with the unit, better than using my manual tuner at the rig. Haven't pushed any power through it yet other than the 100w from my Flex-5000.
If MFJ could get their quality control act together, get some decent technical service, and then actually have someone think about design aspects, this would be a great tuner. Had it actually worked right out of the box, it could easily have got a 4 or maybe even a 5.