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Reviews For: Yaesu FC-40

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : Yaesu FC-40
Reviews: 34MSRP: 400.00
Description:
The FC-40 is a microprocessor-controlled antenna
impedance matching network designed to provide
all-amateur-band transmitting capability with the
FT-897/857 Series of transceivers, when used with
an end-fed random wire or long whip antenna.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.vxstd.com/en/news/image/FC-40.pdf
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
15343.9
W9TR Rating: 2023-01-24
Excellent tuner with great integration with FTDX-10 Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I’m an Icom convert and was looking for the same functionality I had with my IC-706MKII and AH-2. That is one button tuning from the radio.

I started out with an LDG Z-100A as recommended by the fine folks at HRO. It matched my antenna, a 200’ doublet fed with 450 ohm ladder line and a 4:1 balun.
But it didn’t give me one button tune from the radio. It was a bit clunky, actually. And it had a 30W digital power limitation. Not a big deal, but sometimes you need to raise the power a bit to make a contact.

So despite some unfavorable reviews here I tried the Yaesu FC-40.

It is working very well, meeting or exceeding my expectations. It comes packaged with a 5m control cable and a 5m coaxial cable so there is no additional cable to purchase for most installations.

It also comes with a U-bolt kit for mast mounting.
Connection and setup are super easy - just change the tuner select option to in the operation setting menu.

It has been able to match my antenna on every band from 160m to 6M with less than 1.2:1 Vswr.
The user interface is simple. Same as the internal tuner.
If I have a valid tune near the frequency I want to operate, it will automatically engage so no action is required on my part.

The matching range is pretty wide - on some frequencies my antenna feedpoint impedance is quite high. This is the Vswr I’m seeing from my antenna unmatched, running 5W and using the FTDX-10 swr meter and my Autek WM-1:

10M 6:1
12M 4.5:1
15M 5:1
17M 3.5:1
20M 5:1
30M 4:1
40M 10:1*
80M “infinite”*
* a bit of guessing here as the meters aren’t calibrated over 5:1.

In no case would the internal tuner work for any of these bands. I’ve used similar tuners from Icom (AH-2) for years, and you have to do some things to make them work with a doublet:

1. You have to have a good ground. I have an 8’ rod outside the shack.
2. You have to use a current balun. This is a requirement. No other method will work. The balun makes the doublet ‘look’ like an end fed wire to the tuner. It also balances current in the balanced feedline.
3. You have to avoid wire lengths that cause very high feed point impedances on the bands of interest.

I wanted to share my positive experience with this group. If you are looking for a tuner that integrates wel with the FTDX-10, the FC-40 is a good performer.

It’s early, time will tell, but 5 stars for now.
W0ROE Rating: 2022-06-27
Does not work for my antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I tried to tune a recently installed OCFD with this tuner. I got worse readings than with no tuner. Tuned up ok on all bands with a manual tuner (MFJ-949E). Apparently the FC-40 is only made for whips and random wire antennas,
N2KZ Rating: 2022-04-24
Not So Much Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Two things you should know about the Yaesu FC-40: The system requires TWO cables from your transceiver to the remote unit outside. Of course, you need a run a co-ax cable to carry your signal. It also requires a multi-conductor control cable incorporating one of many varieties of the dreaded mini-DIN connector. The FC-40 comes with a 15 foot length of co-ax and a 15 foot control cable. This is barely enough to mount it right outside your window. It is easy to make long coaxial cables. I have heard that others have home-brewed extended length control cables using CAT5 cable - providing you can find mini-DIN connectors to match and you possess good soldering or crimping skills. LDG makes a remote tuner that sends control from shack to antenna much like phantom powering a microphone. Everything rides on a single co-ax cable. Sweet system. Second issue: Those looking for a wider range of antenna compensation from an FC-40 over the antenna matchers incorporated into a Yaesu transceivers will be disappointed. Both the built-in matcher and the remote matcher are nearly identical in design and range. Very important: Yaesu's FC-40 design will reject all antennas that show above a 3:1 SWR. It is NOT a wide range compensator. With these two faults, I could not recommend this product especially when you need to match a wide difference in impedance (such as an end-fed wire.) This is a shame. Yaesu makes beautiful products with excellent worksmanship. This design is quite lacking. PS: The FC-40 includes nearly no instructions for use at all.
VK3ZGP Rating: 2021-12-10
Just OK, Could Have Been Great Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The FC-40 would have been rated with a 'Good' or 'Great!' rating for compatible Yaesu transceivers (FT-950, FT-450, FT-897D and FT-857D) if it had performed as specified. I can only rated it as 'Needs Help' as the FC-40 does not function as specified by Vertex Standard (Yaesu) in their product release (http://vxstd.com/en/news/image/FC-40.pdf) or the FC-40 Installation Instructions leaflet.

Published specifications include:
Operating Frequency Range:
1.8 - 54 MHz with 20+ m end fed wire, 7-54 MHz with YA-007 HF 2.5 m Mobile Whip
Matched SWR:
2.0:1 or less (if antenna is not a multiple of 1/2 wavelength)
In practice the FC-40 can fail to match an antenna that is not a multiple of a 1/2 wavelength. With a combination of fixed and movable antenna supports, nylon rope and ~13AWG multi-stranded copper wire I constructed a variable length end-fed random wire as depicted in the FC-40 Installation Instructions as a "L" Wire Monopole. Height was limited and down to 3m at the lowest point.

Initial experiments confirmed the FC-40 could not simultaneously match the whole 1.8-54MHz operating frequency range when configured with a 2 to 30m end-fed random wire. Basically 6m and 10m bands were never a problem, as the length increased 12m band soon settled down but practically every other band would fail to match at one or more wire lengths. At some lengths it was possible to tune upper or lower sections of a band. Obviously the earthing arrangement, height above ground, near field objects, etc would change results. Varying wire length allowed a different combination of bands to be matched but I couldn't match all bands in the operating frequency range out to a 30m wire length. I didn't bother testing with changes in small increments above 30m as the Yaesu specification was 20+ m.

With approximately 90m length of random wire in my location the FC-40 can successfully tune all bands from 160m through to 6m. Other long lengths less than approximately 120m that were tested could still fail to match 160m or all the 80m band.

The 'permanent' random wire antenna I've built is only relatively lowly slung and zig-zags through trees, etc. as there is no point to constructing anything better. Next to the house in the backyard there is a 66KV, a 220KV and two 500KV transmission lines. Due to QRM I can not provide any meaningful comments about reception, although I can hear the difference in noise level at the band edges where the tuner is disabled.

The only documentation supplied with my FC-40 was a 6 page Installation Instruction leaflet and this actually covers installation plus tuner operation with the FT-897/857 series.

This leaflet doesn't cover the control signaling or protocol. During the tuning process an external SWR meter can appear to show the FC-40 has achieved a better than 2.0:1 SWR match but then the FT-897D displays a HI SWR status which implies a greater than 3:1 SWR load. I assume there was a design decision to cripple the FC-40 microprocessor's load matching algorithm for greater than a 3.0:1 SWR load. Maybe the high-Q matching components, relays, PCB or some other component voltage or current limitation means the FC-40 is too delicate to match 100W at greater than 3.0:1 SWR load. If this is the case it is a pity the FC-40 communications protocol couldn't force the FT-897D to reduce transmitted power instead of disabling the tuning process as both devices are microprocessor controlled and they both have Tx and Rx data lines for control.

The FC-40 microprocessor's matching program appears to store one set of parameters for each 10 kHz block of frequencies. If you are trying an antenna the FC-40 fails to match but is actually marginal within that 10 kHz block of the band, just increasing or decreasing the Tx frequency within the 10 kHz block can sometimes provide a successful match. Once the tuning match has been accepted it holds for all that 10 kHz block. So what originally caused the HI SWR tuning failure has been side stepped. Given that I've only tested this with a random wire antenna on the 80m and 40m bands this procedure may not work in all circumstances or may cause equipment damage.

After the FC-40 has been trained to successfully match a load the operation with the FT-897D is just magic. Bounce around a band or between bands and tuning just happens without any fuss and works flawlessly every time.

Given how well the FC-40/FT-897D operate as a pair, if the FC-40 antenna matching performance actually met the device specifications or there was an acknowledgement (nothing mentioned in the current 2009 Catalog Amateur Radio Equipment, or current FT-897D brochure) of a 3.0:1 or whatever SWR load limitation, then I would have given it a better rating.

The final configuration became a relatively low slung, end fed, ~55m long wire with the LDG recommended 4:1 Balun and LDG Electronics RT-100 tuner. With this configuration the FC-40 could not tune all HF bands while the LDG could tune all HF bands down to 160m. The FC-40 has been withdrawn from service.
WA6III Rating: 2021-03-29
It's not really a "random" wire tuner, But...... Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I originally bought this tuner to use with my Vertex Standard VX1700 LMR/Marine MF/HF transceiver.

The FC-40 is touted as the "matching" accessory wire tuner (as is the FC-30 coax tuner) for the VX1700.

While I was able to get the tuner to work on a 200ft wire on 80-10m it simply would NOT tune 160m. And I tried several different long wire lengths from 180-300ft.PLUS adding capacitors and baluns.

I chose "Needs Help" in the Rating selection because it literally needs help in the form of either an antenna-side balun, capacitor or both And when you do that, you "lose" one band to get another one to work.

I do like the capability to simply press a button on the VX1700 and have it report "Tune" but there are many tuning holes where it will not tune.

On the other hand, after removing the tuner and connecting my SGC SG235 500w end-fed wire tuner, I was able to tune everything 160-10 the FC-40 tuner simply would NOT tune.

Others reviewing this tuner did get it to tune 160 using much shorter antennas and I did not try "short" wire antennas because on 160, really short antennas are not much better than a semi-radiating dummy load.

Ok....MAR 2021, I tried using this tuner with a 240 foot center fed dipole fed with 450 ohm ("window-line") open wire, connecting the open-wire directly to the tuner using the connections provided.

It was able to reliably tune all of 160, 80 and 40 meters!

It really did shine with this combination!

I have upgraded my rating to "OK" for this reason!







NM3A Rating: 2021-03-05
Poor Quality Control Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Found out too late to return that "SO-239" connector was actually a metric thread (1mm pitch vs standard 24 tpi). Could not get PL-259 to thread on fully. Made for erratic tuning and tremendous noise on receive in mobile service. Sent back to Yaesu Factory Service, who couldn't identify problem despite clear photos of problem and their inability to thread PL-259 shell onto the connector. Sent back un-repaired.

I will repair on my own and hopefully will have a functional tuner. Would recommend another brand to anyone considering this. This hassle is not worth the convenience of integral operation with a Yaesu 857 or similar radio.
IU2GID Rating: 2019-11-18
great tuner Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I admit I don't have much experience with similar product but I'm really pleased by how well it works for me.
Who pretend to have one wire for all band should first of all understand that this is really hard to archive as for some band you will fall in a point with too much high impedance to match.
I studied a little the technical supplement and compared the values of capacitance and inductance (total and incremental step) to other product. The FC-40 seems more oriented to high bands and fine tuning in fact it tune up to support 54Mhz while other stop al 30Mhz but from my experience with a doublet antenna I was able to tune 160m 80m and 40m. I was not expecting to tune down to 160m so easily.
I give 5 star not because it's perfect (it could support more watt or have higher total capacitance and inductance to tune higher SWR) but because I think it's great has a great value for the price.
WD0BCT Rating: 2017-12-28
All bands but not on the same wire! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
After playing with random wire lengths in order to tune 10/15/20/40/80M I gave up on finding one wire length to tune multiple bands. I called Yaesu...they said yes that is typical! After using it on 40/20M for a while the tune function is getting unreliable. On 20M I find myself having to tune 2 or 3 times before the SWR is acceptable.
The combination of limited bands and unreliability is forcing me back to my 40/20M inverted vee dipole. If I'm going to be limited to 2 bands I might as well do it without a tuner.
W5GNB Rating: 2015-07-02
OK Tuner.... Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I would suggest using a homebrew balun as suggested by VE3PMV to begin with . The 15-foot cable is very restrictive as to what you would need to do with a remote tuner so I built a 100-foot cable from SHIELDED Cat-6 cable, added the proper connectors, and all works GREAT (Yeasu says it WON'T work but it does...Go Figure)....
I use the tuner with an off center fed 80M Windom, an FT-897 and an FT-817. All works great after dealing with the quirky little tricks needed to feed single wire antennas.....KEEP YOUR GROUND CONNECTIONS VERY SHORT !!!
NC7U Rating: 2015-05-03
Works With a 4:1 Unun Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
The ATU will work with a multi-band OCFD if used with the antenna supplied balun (MFJ). However I purchased the FC-40 for all band including WARC. My success (160 to 30 MHz) was possible using a 72' long wire fed with a 4:1 unun from Balun Design (model 4130) keep the leads from the tuner antenna side as short as possible going to the unun and use a ground.