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Reviews For: SGC SG-231

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : SGC SG-231
Reviews: 12MSRP: 595.00
Description:
Model SG-231 Smartuner automatic microprocessor antenna coupler
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.sgcworld.com/products/231/sg231.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00124.5
M0BQ Rating: 2001-07-26
Exellent - Plug and play radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
After several years of trying with little success to fit some sort of directional antenna into my 4M square garden I took the gamble of selling the mast to buy an SG-231 ATU. I was and still am very glad I did, the unit can be used in almost any situation with very small antennas if necessary. I made a new mast from a scaffolding pole and windsurf masts and attached one end of a dipole to it, the other end went to the chimney with a total length of about 10M. I fed the antenna in the centre with 450 Ohm ladder feeder and connected it to the SG-231. I was very impressed right from the beginning as the ATU tuned almost instantly on all frequencies, and when on air the reports were equally impressive, so it seemed that the ATU was matching well and not losing my RF as heat. I have worked some great DX with this setup and one night I had a 10 hour pileup on 17M and almost worked all states in one session. Many stations told me that I was the only station they could hear from Europe that night.

I have since moved house and now have a bigger garden but it is still not wide enough for even a small beam so I am using the centrefed doublet again, this time 60? long and fed with home made open wire feeder at about 40? AGL. It again works very well on all bands, Richard 2E0AVF has been using my station lately and he has been very successful working DX on 10M .

I have also used the SG-230 mobile for a while to match an 8? whip on my towbar. This worked fairly well, until the feed wire from the ATU to the antenna shorted out and caught fire. That just shows how high the Voltages can be on antennas as the feed cable was heavy cored with a 3mm thick rubber insulation and it arced through it. I now use loaded whips on the car which seem to work better, but they are less convenient, and the SG-231 is back where it works best, in a steel cabinet fixed to my garden wall. The one down side is that the SGC231 does not always give as good a match as it could even when using the Smart lock Pro to force it to retune. The only way round this is to tune it up on a different frequency in the same band where the VSWR is high enough to make the ATU retune, then come back to the desired frequency and tune it again.
This is not a problem as the VSWR is always below 2:1 and the internal ATU in most new radios will handle it. Please feel free to contact me if you want any more information.

It is a common mis-belief that these ATUs are for end fed wires only. They can be used in any situation, dipoles, end fed, loops etc. For more info visit www.sgcworld.com

Jon Illsley
M0BQQ
W1WOW Rating: 2000-07-01
Ground Ground Ground !! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Hello,

I have used the SGC-231 "160m-6m" Smartuner both at home and aboard my 20ft trailer sailor. It has always worked great and really is amazing to hear the clicking and clacking as the tuner finds the best match for the frequency and length of wire you are using. The SGC Smartuners all need a very good ground in order to be efficent at throwing RF. At the Home QTH I used the SGC to fire up a long wire of about 75ft. I screwed the SGC-231 right to the outside of the house and ran several copper wires to a grounding rod. The SGC-231 was only about 3 ft from the ground. It word great but you still have to give it 12 vdc. This makes things a little combersome... In the Sailboat, I used the SGC-231 to fire up a back stay. It worked faily well but you must really ground the heck out of it..!

Give one a try it may be just what you are looking for...

Jason S. Hulet W1WOW