| WD8JOL |
Rating:      |
2005-06-01 | |
| Another Elecraft Winner! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I've built several Elecraft kits, including a K2 with most accessories. I wanted to try an automatic antenna tuner, wanted to operate it remotely, and liked the idea of having one that I could use with a variey of QRP rigs. The T1 fills the bill perfectly. Others have described their building experiences and how well the tuner works with a variety of antennas. My experiences are similar. It's super!
What I think may be of interest to some is the ability to activate the tuner remotely (not just with the FT-817 and patch cable). I put the tuner close to the point that the feedline enters the shack (ladder line to an Elecraft BL-1 balun). With nothing more than a momentary switch on the end of a small shielded cable plugged into the side of the T1, I can change bands and retune from my operating position several feet away. All I have to do is momentarily press the switch, activate TUNE on the K2 (or hold the key down) and watch on an SWR meter as the tuner does its magic. I think this is going to be a great feature for everything from casual ragchewing to my very modest efforts at QRP contesting.
Congratulations to Elecraft for another great product!
Parker
WD8JOL |
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| G3XBM |
Rating:     |
2005-05-20 | |
| Very good and tiny auto-ATU |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
The kit went together in 5 x 1 hour lunchtimes with no problems apart from losing a diode on the floor!
On the air it is a dream and tunes my random longwire antenna (about 60 feet tuned against a radiator ground) on all bands from 80m-10m to a good SWR. With the FT817 patch lead it then remembers the band settings for next time allowing true "no-tune" operation 80-10m. Why a 4 rather than 5 score? I'd hoped that such a flexible ATU would have also tuned the longwire on 160m and 6m (as claimed) too but it will not converge onto a low SWR on either of these bands, so I was slightly disappointed.
Overall, it is a great piece of QRP engineering though so all credit to Elecraft. |
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| WI6T |
Rating:      |
2005-05-12 | |
| A must-have low power tuner |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Built over two evenings. Required: Steady hands, a 20 to 25 watt or temp. controlled iron with a very narrow or pointed tip. Flush (flat base) clippers so as to clip leads very close to the board. Highly recommended: Lighted magnifier for close soldering and viewing color codes on resistors.
The manual recommends a DMM and Elecraft is not kidding; if you do not have a DDM, get one as it makes the confirmation of resistor values a sure thing and assists with other construction phases. Also, I made a point of getting .022 diameter solder from Radio Shack when I viewed the board and prior to heating the soldering iron. There are a number of surface mount devices and you will solder adjacent to them and the small diameter solder aids in preventing possible bridges. Speaking of soldering, Elecraft says you may use a 100 watt iron on the BNC connectors. I used 40 watts and that was fine. I strongly suggest you refrain from using the old pistol Weller iron!
The kit went together perfectly, passed all tests, and performs exactly as promised. It even loaded my garage rain gutter fed with 22 AWG copper wire. The tuner will read out the SWR, battery voltage, and other info by flashing Morse. I have assembled other Elecraft kits and am now ready to take on their K2 transceiver.
My only caution with this kit is that you be reasonably confident of your soldering abilities. It's alright to practice on an old board first. |
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| VK2ACD |
Rating:      |
2005-05-09 | |
| Tiny and terrific |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I've recently built this kit, to use with my Elecraft K2 and FT817 transceivers. It was completed in three stages, about 10 hours all up, being very careful as you wouldn't want to have to re-do anything on the densely packed board. It worked perfectly straight off, tunes my G5RV in a second. The next step is to try it on a longwire. I agree with earlier reviewers about the plastic case and the double toroid fitting, but still its a little marvel, I was going to built a manual Z match tuner but saw this just in time. All quality parts supplied, excellent manual. highly recommended, but you'll need a good fine temperature-controlled iron. Itching for the holidays to take it backpacking. |
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| N0MQ |
Rating:      |
2005-04-13 | |
| Elecraft TI Outstanding Portable ATU Kit |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I have not built many kits this size as most are small kits. There has been a lot said about how great the tuner is and how it tunes everything so I want to share my work with the support that Elecraft does. I am still in the leaning stage of kit building but thanks to Wayne's great support I am ready for another kit.. The manual is outstanding. Now to the meat of the subject. The only problems that I had was my poor soldering skills and toroid wiring. I must say that the support for Elecraft products is the best. I sent a email to Wayne and he answered me with all my questions answered. Wayne did not tell me everything to do but guided me in the right directions to look for my mistakes. It was a great learning experience for me. When you have people like Wayne running a company they will always be the leaders in the ham radio field. |
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| G4ILO |
Rating:      |
2005-04-13 | |
| The perfect companion for an FT-817! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Over the weekend I completed building the new Elecraft T1 QRP auto-ATU kit. What a great little kit this is! It's easy to build. The instructions are exemplary, and anyone who can solder should have no trouble completing it.
I haven't had much time to put it to the test yet, but the T1 matched my non-resonant attic horizontal loop, which has an SWR of well over 10:1 on some bands, on all bands 3.5 to 50MHz. First contact on 21MHz, 5W SSB to Bulgaria, received a 58 report.
The FT-817 adapter cable is an excellent addition, automatically switching the tuner to the last-remembered setting on each band. This is a very handy feature when listening around at home, but can probably be dispensed with in the field, where the last used setting may not be the setting you need this time.
The T1 would make a great complement to the FT-817 in any situation, but its greatest asset, like the 817 itself, is its small size. About the size of a pack of cards, and weighing about 5oz including the PP3 battery, it adds little bulk or weight to that of the radio.
With a couple of lengths of wire, one to toss into a tree, the other for ground, you have a compact "go anywhere" antenna that will really radiate, for much the same cost as one of those expensive, fiddly to adjust and inefficient short vertical whips.
I felt that the lack of an internal ATU was one of the FT-817's major design limitations, and it was one of the reasons I sold my first FT-817 a couple of years ago. It's early days yet, but I am pretty confident that this great little product will allow me to use the FT-817 out in the field in the way I had hoped when I bought the first one. In fact, Yaesu should have built something like this into the '817 in the first place. |
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| N2XE |
Rating:      |
2005-04-11 | |
| A great backpackable ATU, but... |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Technically, functionally and electrically, the T1 sets a new standard. The user interface is a tad funky but OK once you play with it for a few minutes.
The assembly manual is the best Elecraft has put out to date which is hard to do since they were already the best--by a wide margin. If you don't like to build, fork over another $30 and get it completely assembled.
The board and components are top notch. The shunt capacitors are conservatively rated. There are no aluminum electrolytic capacitors to dry out in five years and no potentiometers to twiddle or get jarred out of alignment. The physical layout is the typical excellent Elecraft shoehorn job.
I'll be honest, I don't like the plastic case. It's probably necessary to keep the T1 affordable but I would gladly pay another $25 for aluminum. Aside from superior electrical designs, Elecraft's physical design, ergonomics and bullet-proof enclosures are what got them to Mt. Olympus of Hamdom. I hope this doesn't signal a change for Elecraft. My advice, if you're going to give me plastic, make beefy plastic at the very least. This wasn't enough to knock the T1 down to a "4" but it almost was.
Summary, this is a pocket size Z-11 that always finds a better match. Elecraft could charge twice what they do and it would still be a bargain. |
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| WA3ELQ |
Rating:      |
2005-04-07 | |
| Excellent |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I just finished building and testing my T1. I am highly impressed.
- The unit is easy to assemble. Although things are a little tight (typical of Elecraft) there were no major problems with fit or soldering. Assembly time: approx. 6 hours
- The manual is thorough and easy to follow. I have some experience and did not need some of the details included, but even a novice kit builder should have no problems.
- The unit works as advertised. I was able to get a 1:1 SWR in nearly every test situation. The T1 had no problem matching even highly mismatched antennas such as using the wrong antenna for a band. I was able to get a match where the internal tuners in my Kenwood transceivers would not even come close.
- I was able to tune properly with signals well under 1 watt.
- It is a nice, compact unit. It should be easy to carry and use for portable QRP operation.
One area where there could be a minor problem for builders is the transformer using 2 torroids. Since the original design called for a single torroid, the work here is especially tight. When installing, the manual (actually the errata)indicates the transformer should be installed first, and then the green wire that passes through the torroid should be passed through and inserted into its mounting hole. (The green wire was soldered into the back hole before the torroid was to be installed.) I found it is a better idea to pass the wire through and insert it into the mounting hole while inserting the torroid. Otherwise the green wire can be rather difficult to put into place. However, this is a very minor concern.
The T1 is great! Congratulations, Elecraft, on another superior product.
Ralph L. "Larry" Abbott WA3ELQ
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|
| N9JXY |
Rating:      |
2005-03-25 | |
| Excellent! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I received my T1 yesterday and built it last night. It went together flawlessly and I'm going to love it. I've been wishing I had a small automatic tuner like this and now I have one! A couple comments:
Positive - Now that I have the finished tuner in my hand, I can say it definitely exceeded my expectations. I'm especially fascinated that you can check the tuner settings and more closely read the latest SWR measurment by accessing the "info" feature and easily reading it on the flashing LED's.
Negative - Since the assembly manual is written for builders of all skill levels, there are a lot of details and cautions that an experienced builder may not need to hear. That made construction slower and a little more confusing for me, since I'm a stickler for reading instructions but wanted to zip through it.
I did have one problem after building it, but it was my fault. I didn't have the rear of the battery all the way down against the bottom of the box when installing it, and accidentally broke the battery retaining tab when I was trying to push it down. I won't bother to fix it though. A shim will work fine - especially since I only plan to replace the battery once a year, when I replace our smoke alarm batteries!
Start to finish, the project took about six hours, so I'm going to need to get caught up on some sleep tonight!
Denny Payton N9JXY
Auburn, IN
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|
| N3HU |
Rating:      |
2005-03-25 | |
| hi-performance, small pkg |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I received my T1 tuner this week. Approximate completion
time was 6 hours including inventory of the parts. The
directions are excellent with good quality pictures of the
completed assembly and critical points in the construction. The
directions are easy to follow. Assembly was straightforward and
went off without a hitch. The boards are *small* and you have to be
very careful to avoid bridges or melting relays, connectors
etc.
Operating the unit is a snap after just a few uses. Once
you get the "hang" of it, a quick glance at the
quick reference printed on the label keeps you
on the "straight and narrow".
Here are my initial test results using a buddi-pole
configured as an 80m vertical on 75 feet of RG-6x for
80m only. A 40m Inverted Delta loop fed with ladder-line
to a 4:1 balun was used for the remaining frequencies. All
the tests were done using an FT-817 at half-power and
a Diamond SX-1000 swr meter.
Here's how it performed compared to no tuner and
another autotuner that I have:
freq bypass other tuner T-1 Ant
3570 2.5 1.8 1.35 Buddi-pole vertical
7060 4 1.5 1.35 40m Inverted Delta Loop
10112 9 2.7 1.0 "
14068 8 1.7 1.2 "
18070 >10 2 1.2 "
21168 5 1.7 1.3 "
24900 >>10 1.8 1.6 "
28598 >10 2.9 1.25 "
50175 3.5 1.9 1.8 "
Add all this in with the fact that the unit weighs 5.6
ounces (a pinewood derby) and is about the size of an HT
battery pack and Elecraft has another winner!
rob
N3HU |
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