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Reviews For: Elecraft T1 Miniature ATU for all Low-Power Transceivers

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : Elecraft T1 Miniature ATU for all Low-Power Transceivers
Reviews: 63MSRP: 135
Description:
This may be the world's smallest high-performance, stand-alone ATU. At just
4.4 x 2.5 x 0.9 inches, and weighing only 5 oz., it's about one-fourth the size
and weight of other compact automatic antenna tuners.

The T1 has 7 inductors and 7 capacitors to provide a wide tuning range. It
can be used with any 0.5 to 20-watt transceiver or transmitter, and can be
tuned in any mode, even SSB voice. Many L-C settings are saved in the unit's
EEPROM for quick re-tune (typically 1 to 2 seconds).

An internal 9-V battery powers the unit, and battery life is excellent thanks to
the use of latching relays and auto power-off after each use. There's zero
power consumed except when actually tuning.

There's a "smart" adapter cable available for the Yaesu FT-817. This
convenient accessory allows the T1 ATU to track band changes made at the
transceiver, recalling per-band L-C settings without the need to transmit.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.elecraft.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
15634.7
K5HIP Rating: 2023-02-17
Great to put remote on sota Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is a great little tuner. I bought 50' of trs audio cable from Amazon basics to go with it and a button that shorts the trs contacts. The audio cable plugs into the side of the T1. I then 3d printed a center insulator for my dipole wire which I velcro this unit to. This setup allows me to place the T1 at the antenna feedpoint and initiate a tune remotely. Basically, it turns it into a portable QRP version of the ICOM AH-4 . Works great.
WB7VTY Rating: 2022-08-08
Outstanding QRP Autotuner Until It Failed Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I havent had the T1 long enough to say anything about its reliability but Im confident it will be good. However, I can say, this is an outstanding little tuner. Very easy to use. Tunes everything I have thrown at it. Very small. Reasonably fast. Battery can be easily changed - you dont have to take screws out of the chassis to do it. Seems to have extremely good battery life. There is a Quick Reference guide attached to the front of the tuner although you wont need it. Its very easy to use.
I bought this as a companion for the Icom 705 I bought recently and its good combo. Even though it doesnt have an interface cable for the 705 (yet) its as easy as pushing a button on the tuner and then you have a few seconds to transmit a carrier to tune. I use an AM carrier because its reduced power and a simple mode change to get there. Change to AM, push the T1 button, key the mic, done. I dont think I'd buy the interface cable if it were available. No need for another cable to plug in. I also have a FT817 and the T1 takes up half the width of the 817 so you could velcro it to the top of the 817 and it wont cover the speaker. So what exactly have I tuned with it?.... At home I have two fan dipoles. One for 80 / 40 and one for 20 / 30. The T1 will tune the 80 / 40 on all bands from 80 through 6. It will tune the 20 / 30 on all bands from 30 through 6. I have an MFJ 2286 vertical which it will tune on all bands 40 through 6 no matter how far off you are on the coil tap it seems. I also have a wire antenna for SOTA / Portable that it tunes from 160 through 6 meters. That antenna is a LDG 9:1 Unun with a 58 foot radiator and about a 29 foot counterpoise. It tunes all these easily. I have had several auto tuners with mixed results. Ive looked at the T1 before and now wish I had just bought it in the first place. If you have any questions feel free to email me at wb7vty@gmail.com. 73
Joe

5-7-22 Update.
I finally found something to ding the T1 over haha. Today I was doing a POTA activation and FINALLY, after a year of use, the battery died. I use this thing a bunch. Several days a week I will be band hopping with it chasing SOTA / POTA and doing activations when I can. It gets a lot of use so the fact that the battery lasted a year is astounding. The ding. haha.... When you change the battery, let the tuner set for a couple minutes before installing the new battery. After I changed my battery, it acted like the power / tune button was going bad. Just unresponsive to requests to tune. Well, maybe the new battery was weak. Put in another new battery, still bad. Then I noticed that taping the button worked fine, it was only the hold to tune that did not. So, not a switch problem. So, I took the tuner apart to inspect stuff and found nothing. When I reassembled the tuner it worked fine. Then I got suspicious about the battery change time. I took the battery out and reinstalled it the same way I did the battery change in the field. Problem was back. Unresponsive to requests to tune. Ah Ha! I pulled the battery out, waited about a minute and then reinstalled the original replacement battery that I suspected might be low, and presto, tuner works fine. SO.... when you replace the battery in the T1, give it a minute to reset or whatever happens when the capacitors inside it discharge and it will be fine. Otherwise you will chase your tail as I did, thinking you have had a tuner failure. Other than this issue, at one year, it just keeps working and I have never been disappointed in it. It tunes anything, and is small and light. It has made am excellent companion for the 705 and 817. Great tuner, but bad on Elecraft for setting a trap like that. Thats worth a minor demerit. Any questions feel free to shoot me an email at wb7vty@gmail.com.

Joe

May 9, 2022 update
Sadly, my assessment of the issue above was incorrect. The T1 continued to work for a day or so and then the problem returned and became worse with the tuner at times becoming completely unresponsive to input from either switch. Occasionally when telling it to tune, instead of getting the usual flash of the green LED, it would just have a feeble weird little flicker and not tune. Battery is good, tried another just for fun, same issues. No bad battery indication. The tuner has seen a lot of use in the year that I have had it, but it has been very well cared for, used carefully, and not exposed to any weather during activations, because Im a lazy fair weather activator haha. There is no reason for it to have failed in a year. SO, it was a great tuner right up until it croaked. It did a good job, but should have lasted far longer. So from great to poor it goes. Any questions feel free to shoot me an email at wb7vty@gmail.com.

Joe
WB7VTY

August 8, 2022
I forgot to add this update to the dead T1 story. I sent the T1 back to Elecraft. Top notch service. They fixed it under warranty in a timely manner and were responsive to communications. Turns out that some T1s develop a problem with noise on the B+ to the processor. They add a capacitor to get rid of the noise. The T1 came back and is working fine again. So, upgraded my rating to Good. I dont want to rate it harshly because it is an excellent little tuner that will match just about anything. Unfortunate that the problem popped up so soon. If not for the failure I would give it a rating of "great". I dont know if this additional capacitor is now "standard equipment" on new T1's. Certainly should be. As always, if you have any questions feel free to shoot me an email. WB7VTY@gmail.com.

73
Joe
WB7VTY

K8ESE Rating: 2021-04-07
Elecraft qrp T1 tuner works great! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
This T1 qrp tuner works great. I run qrp with Mizuho MX handheld HF radios for most bands. I can put the MX radio, telescoping antenna, and this tuner in my pocket...I use the mini cw key on the radio..I get the swr down to 1:1 using this little tuner....have made contacts on this pocket radio as far as 1100 miles on 40 meters cw and ssb...This tuner is small and so convenient and easy to use.
ZL1YAK Rating: 2021-01-24
Could likely tune a wet noodle Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Amazing little unit. Easy to use, well made. Just needs a cable to trigger from IC-705 and it would be perfect.
KN6SU Rating: 2020-11-26
T1 and MAT work well with IC-705 but see MAT-705 caveats Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
As everyone knows, the IC-705 does not have a built in ATU, and given that most folks who have or are thinking of getting one plan to use it portable and would find having a lightweight ATU to deal with less than optimally matched field antennas a great convenience if not a necessity, I wanted to see how well the T1 would mate with my 705 to address impedance matching and just how convenient it would be to use with that rig. I am going to compare it directly with the other two ATUs I've used with the 705: the LDG Z100Plus and the MAT-705.

First the weights (in oz. with batteries) and dimensions (in inches):Z100+= 20.3oz/5.375x5.375x1.5;
MAT-705= 8.7oz/2.625x5.8.75x1.125; T1= 5.6oz/2.5x4.75x0.875. For these specs alone, the T1 wins for the backpacking op looking for the smallest package and lightest weight. The MAT comes in a close second. The LDG is, IMHO, ruled out as part of a minimalist backpacking kit for anything longer than a day hike. I'd rather carry a pound more of food...

In my experience all three ATUs will quickly match the usual portable antennas and do a decent job of it. The LDG and MAT have the edge as regards procedural simplicity. They can communicate with the 705 via a 3.5 mm stereo patch cord to the "tuner" jack in the 705. This allows easy re-tuning after you QSY even to another band, simply by keying up in any mode after you QSY. You can force a tuning cycle with either tuner via the 705 function menu or the "tune" button on the LDG (not on the MAT). This is an extremely convenient feature, but AFAIK is not available on the T1. It would be great if the J3 port on the T1 could be made to communicate with the IC-705 (I haven't tried it yet and won't unless I hear from Elecraft it is possible). At this point, the MAT wins the convenience contest for use with the 705. If the choice were between the T1 and LDG, the T1 wins hands down due to weight/size criteria. Another issue where both the MAT and T1 beat the LDG for backpack portable use is in their RF connectors: they use BNC whereas the LDG uses SO-239. BNC makes more sense than UHF connectors for portable backpacking use with the 705,and obviates the need to carry a bunch of coax adapters.

Build quality: Some folks dislike the plastic case of the T1 and prefer the metal cases found on the LDG and MAT. Metal may be more durable, but it adds to weight. The T1's size and weight make it easy to store and protect in your pack, and the plastic case provides enough protection in my opinion.

While the MAT looks solid and well-made and works flawlessly in conjunction with the 705, it has one serious design flaw regarding how the battery is mounted and potential difficulties changing it.

The battery is held in place with a strip of sticky tape. To get at the battery, you need to slide the PCB out of the case. The instructions suggest removing one of the panels (each is held with 4 allen screws) and pull out the board. NOT A GOOD IDEA. The battery barely fits in the case, and it's easy to damage something by pulling out the board this way. Better is to remove both front and back panels and carefully push the board out while pulling the other side. Then you need to CAREFULLY pry the battery off the board and PRECISELY position a fresh battery (if you don't get the position right, the board won't slide back in).

Because of this design flaw, battery changes need to be done VERY CAREFULLY to avoid damaging the unit. I'm not sure how well the sticky tape will hold up over time,but eventually it will lose its stickiness and will need to be renewed. MAT really should have designed a better way to hold and change the battery.

This would not be so much a problem, were it not for the fact that the MAT doesn't automatically turn itself off...like the T1 and LDG. The user must manually turn it off, otherwise the circuit will dissipate some power that over a relatively short period of time will drain the battery. IF you remember to turn it off when it is not in use, the battery should last for quite a while, and IF you are extremely careful during battery changes, the MAT, at just 3oz over the T1, would be the best ATU for the 705. IF NOT, the T1 should be your choice. We'll have to wait to see what ICOM comes up with when they release their tuner...

That's all I have to say for now about these three ATUs for use with the 705. All will work. Which one will work best for you depends on how you feel about the characteristics of each, which I've discussed at some length, in the hope that it may help other Hams decide which one is best for their use with the 705.

73



KB1GMX Rating: 2020-11-21
it does what I want Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I built mine as a kit and it went together smoothly per the manual. Very nice kit.

As an antenna tuner its very good, I think it will tune a nail on 80m... or at least try. That said I've tried it with a bunch of practical antennas and random wires and it tuned them. The acid test was a near half wave wire(30ft a few feet short) for 20m and that tunes well and worked very well with a 16 foot counterpoise.

Currently using this with a KNQ7A (40m 10W) radio with excellent results.

Conclusions:
Small, portable, excellent battery life, and rugged.

Update, now the init is 8+ years old still works well
.
The only burp is as a loner the user put 20W into it and fried
a diode in the SWR detector after being told 10W absolute max.
Common diode and easy fix and been solid since.

Since then I've added a FT817 and Argonaut 505 plus other QRP radios and the little tuner has been the go to for all low power QRP applications. Handy for QRP mobile as its small.

Battery life is nothing short of excellent. I do have to remember to replace periodically as modern 9V have questionable shelf life.


Allison



W5NM Rating: 2020-11-20
Problem Time Owned: more than 12 months.
When it works it is a great little tuner.
My unit, and I suspect others, after reading
many reviews, appears to get stuck in bypass mode.
Even after removing the battery for a long time, it still sometimes doesn't want to go into tune mode.
No sequence of button pushing will take it out of
bypass mode. However after playing with it for a
ridiculous amount of time, I have been able to finally
get it back into tune mode.
Also I don't think the instructions printed on the front
of the tuner are very clear.

Carmine W5NM
VK4BS Rating: 2020-09-24
Fine when it works Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
My T1 was bought secondhand and worked OK when I got it. However, soon after it decided it would only tune intermittently or not at all. It will do some things, e.g. provide info using morse on the leds, read power of the transmitter, but generally will not enter into tune mode. Contacting Elecraft was useless as they had no suggestions as to the cause or remedies. So, a very disappointing experience as I had high hopes for it in conjunction with my PRC64 and uBitx.
VE3IPS Rating: 2020-05-28
Ideal Pocket Tuner for any QRP rig Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought this tuner when it first came out and it matches pretty much anything I throw at it

An antenna made from crutches, 2 shopping carts, a hamstick, a rain gutter or hotel balcony

My favourite is the Norcal Doublet

This is a must have if you enjoy Qrp

I plan to use this with the Icom 705

The battery lasts forever!

Just add a bnc to bnc or so239 piglet patch cord, a banana plug to bnc adapter, a male to male b c adapter, 50 of speaker wire and some lightweight paracord.

Go find a tree, throw a wire and go make QSO
W6UXB Rating: 2019-08-03
Lovely Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Works great with my mcHF clone RS-918, nothing not to like