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Reviews For: CG-3000 Automatic Antenna Tuner 10 - 200 WATT .PEP

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : CG-3000 Automatic Antenna Tuner 10 - 200 WATT .PEP
Reviews: 35MSRP: $320
Description:
CG3000 Automatic Antenna Tuner. Covers all HAM bands from 1.8- 30 Mhz Continuously. It can fit long wire, mobile whip, vertical antenna, dipole antenna(without balun), etc.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.cgantenna.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00354.6
ON4VP Rating: 2011-10-19
Great in combination with verticale antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is an update on a previous review that I wrote a few years ago. Last month I bought myself a second unit. I used the CG-3000 in the past with good results. Because I don't like putting out more than 60 radials on the lawn, I choose to elevate the radials. I've put up six with a lenght aprox. 1/4 wavelenght for 80 meters. The CG-3000 is mounted on a 12ft aluminum pole. The six radials run down to aprox. 3ft above the lawn. They are isolated guy wires to so the pole is held in position. On top of this pole I mounted a 33ft tall fiberglas mast with the antenna wire inside.

Different from last time I now supply the 12VDC trough the coax cable by using two MFJ bias-tee adapters. This way I don't need a separate dc cable.

The antenna performs very good from 6 to 40 meters. 80 and 160 are ok but I could improve signals when longer elements would be used. The CG-3000 finds a perfect match on all 9 bands with swr between 1.1/1 and 1.4/1 all the time. Tuning is fast. I'm very happy with this setup.

The CG-3000 makes it possible to work all bands with one antenna. Pictures of the setup can be found http://www.qrz.com/db/on4vp.

----------------------
Earlier 5-star review posted by ON4VP on 2008-01-17

On one word: what a great product. I bought this tuner with several purposes in mind. I'm temporary working dx without directional antennas and I needed a multiband solution to setup a dx antenna. I started mounting a 15ft support mast and I mounted a 33ft fibermast on top. Inside the mast runs the 33ft wire. The wire is connected to the CG-3000 tuner at 15ft abouve ground. I attached 6 elevated 33ft radials sloping down to almost 8ft. The radials are isolated and are also used to hold the mast.

The setup works as 5/8 antenne on 17m and 1/2 on 20m and 1/4 on 40 meters. The CG-3000 matches ALL bands from 160 meters up to 6 meters without hesitation and SWR is better than 1.2/1 on all bands (1:1 in most cases). I get very good results with this antenna.

I've worked lot of DX (even now sunspot numbers are low) on 17,20,30 and 40 meters. Top bands are closed but I managed to work nice 6 meter FM contacts and repeaters. Also 80 works pretty decent and I can work European stations on 160 to.

I'm very pleased with the results running only 200 watts from my TS-480HX. The CG-3000 handles 200 watt just fine in SSB and 150 in CW. It tunes fast and keeps a very good match in windy conditions.

I would buy this tuner again without hesitation. It is a great product. I owned SG-230 and other models, but prefer this tuner. It's faster, smaller and works better imho. It is mounted outside. I recommend the CG-3000 to users who like fast and easy setup of multiband operation.

I've experimented with different vertical settings. You can look at some photo's on my most recent setup at: http://picasaweb.google.be/philippe.vandekerckhove/33ftMultibandVertical
WD4ELG Rating: 2011-02-03
Updated review, still 5/5 Time Owned: more than 12 months.
My personal experiences since October 2008: I now have three of these units (they are actually more properly called remote couplers, as my Elmer recently pointed out to me). All three were purchased from Array Solutions (which no longer carries them, but you can get the same units from DX Engineering, MFJ 926).

The first unit is still used on the 43 foot vertical. I use this antenna on 40 and 30 meters.

The second unit is used on an 160 meter inverted L.

The third unit is used with an 80 meter half-square antenna at the base of one leg (high impedance voltage feed).

I am pleased with the quick tuning results, the ability of the units to withstand a variety of cold and warm weather conditions, and the simple fact that I don't worry about any SWR losses in my 350 feet of coax from the house to the antenna farm.

I am supplying voltage to each unit via the coax using Array Solutions Bias-T units, which work flawlessly.

While these units are limited to 200 watts, that certainly seems to be enough juice for me to get through in 95% of the pileups which I encounter on the low bands.

I take great comfort in knowing that I am sending out 200 watts from my rig and I am delivering about 175 watts to the radiating elements (25 watts due to inherent coax losses and some minimal tuner losses, but basically NONE due to SWR along the coax).
KD5FX Rating: 2010-11-20
Working great! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've had my CG-3000 for about a year now. It's mounted just under the eve of my house. A short wire runs to the metal rain gutter and a longer wire runs down the wall and is connected to an 8 ft ground rod which has two radials connected to it. I don't have room for any more than that, very small yard. The rain gutter is new and hopefully well connected all around the house, a total of 210 ft. It's also isolated from ground and the house. No wood, the gutter is connected to this 'board' that's made of mostly concrete! That's what they use down here in the Houston area because termites don't like concrete! ha!
It tunes up all bands 80 thru 10 meters just fine. First time on each band takes about 5 secs and then a split second after that. Seems to work pretty well, I've worked all over the USA and several DX stations with it so far.
I also tried it with a random length wire for about a week, wire was about 70 ft long and mounted to the top of my wooden fence. It tuned up fine on 80 thru 10 but didn't pull in the signals quite as well as the rain gutter. So I took down the wire and hooked up the gutter again. I've even been on the air during a rain storm with the gutters full! Couldn't really tell any difference.
73, Dave KD5fx
GM4WCE Rating: 2010-11-20
Fit and forget ATU Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I fitted the ATU in my garden shed at the feedpoint of my end fed wire of around 115 feet in length. The earth system is a couple of hundred feet of wire buried under the lawn. The shed is about 50 feet away from the house so I fed 12v from the shack power supply through a buried spare run of RG58 coax which runs alongside the feeder running underground from the house to the shed. The ATU tunes very quickly when I change bands and only needs a touch on the key to retune as I change bands. I use it on 160 to 15m with absolutely no problems at all. Signal reports are good. So this really is a fit and forget item as it just gets on with the job with no fuss.
G4VVQ Rating: 2010-05-30
Does the Job in the end. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Hi all i have just bought one of these tuners, by what i have heard it's not as good as the Smart Tuner, i had big problems tuning it to 160 meters, loads of phone calls and emails, my Antenna was 150 feet long end fed, my Earth is a copper tank buried under ground, i could get it to match on all bands except 160 meters, on there it just kept clattering and banging forever, i tried everything that people told me to do, it would not tune, i had Earth, Counterpoise, end fed Antenna, power supply, everything...it says to avoid half waves, someone told me to wind a coil and put on the long wire at tuner end, well that cured it up to a point, but didn't fancy having coils on there, so i put an MFJ analizer from Earth/Counterpoise to aerial, and found a dip around 1.7 mhz.
So in desperation i cut about 20 feet of the wire antenna and it all worked ok, but you shouldn't have to do that, it should match any length over 8 meters, so i couldn't really avoid half waves on 40 and 80 mts, but still works on those bands, in fact it tunes from 10 to 160 now, another niggling thing is sometimes when your talking on SSB the tuner decides to re-calibrate and with the tuner in the shack all that clattering when your talking is a bit off putting...so i give it 3 out of 5 just to be sociable hi..but not entirely happy with it, but i am getting good reports with it, and it recieves well too, i emailed the Chinese Guy and he admitted you might not be able to tune it on 160 mts without some extra inductance or capacitance or both hi...
..Fred in England, Near London. G4VVQ.
ON7RU Rating: 2010-02-08
Great unit, even on 160m Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
CG-3000

Used this tuner the first time when I was on holiday in LX. During four days I managed to log over 600 stations including a lot of DX. The antenna was a 43 feet cupper wire, fixed to a 43 feet fishing rod. I was impressed but instead of writing a honeymoon review I gave it another try during the 160M WW CW contest. Used the same fishing rod, but used 90 feet of wire in a inverted-L combination. Radials used where 3x60feet and 5x30 feet. As a rookie on 160m the 0 on my DXCC table is replaced by 47, managed to work 10 states , Canada and logged over 300 QSOs….using 100W.

I recommend this unit to everyone, if you have questions feel free to mail me.

Read my 160m story and find some picutures on my blog:
http://on7ru.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1DD80565D9855D3F!209.entry
and
http://on7ru.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1DD80565D9855D3F!201.entry


Frank, ON7RU
http://www.on7ru.net
ON4EM Rating: 2010-02-03
flexible Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
flexible tuner!

I've instaled the tuner at 1m above ground in an inverted plastic trash for protection.
I connected a 25m wire delta loop on both hot and cold connections on the cg-3000 (closed circuit) to avoid the use of radials/ground.
The loop is vertically placed around a tree of +-10m high.
Tuning can be done from 80m to 6m. 160m cannot be tunned probably due to the loop diameter that should be higher

(-)
documentation:
As exaplained in previous reviews, doc is poor.
I'm using SGC-230 documentation instead ;-) Both devices seem to be similar.

(+)
very flexible, robust, easy and invisible
Support: I asked support to confirm I can short circuit the tuner (see closed circuit setup above) and they answered in 3 days - from china and in english.
The tuning procedure takes place at the antenna, not in the shack.

Other:
-Some people mentionned a wrong connection in the tuner for the + and - of the power cable. Mine was ok (I checked inside and controlled all wires).
-using the optional remote control unit is a plus: you can remotely reset the tuner to decrease swr. The tuner will work correctly without resetting but swr can be decreased if you tune on the frequency you want to use.

great device!
Manu
ON4BEM
SV2HWR Rating: 2010-01-24
excellent Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I bought the CG-3000 6-7 months ago to tune a longwire abt 20m long 6m high and some radials random length. CG-3000 dont need of control cables just 12v power. It tunes VERY fast with SWR below 1.5. The results are pretty good since i have 100+ dxcc's in a 7 months period. It also tunes on 6m. I suggest the cg-3000 to everyone!
G0YAP Rating: 2010-01-23
Superb! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I had been using a half wave dipole for 80mtrs for years and thinking it was the mutts do-dars on 80. The only problem was it was a mono band antenna. I was speaking to a friend who had one of these CG-3000 tuners and he talked me into buying one. I banged a 3mtr earth rod into the ground with a couple of short radials, mounted the tuner on the wall outside my shack and run 107ft of wire down my garden..WOW! it wiped the floor with the dipole on 80 and works fantastic on the rest. I found it is better on rx, bringing in less noise. I did have to make an 'ugly balun' (10 turns of coax round a plastic tube) because if I just plugged the RG-58 into it, I had RF coming back into the shack and causing problems. The U/Balun sorted that 100%. The tuner it well made, tunes in approx 1 sec and really does the job. The manual is a bit 'Chinesey' but tells you what you need to know. Well worth the money and cheaper than the SGC types. Now operating 160 to 10mtrs.
PA3EQX Rating: 2009-12-15
Great product (manual realy poor) Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
What a fantastic ATU! I've hooked it up to 12 mtr LW and use the central heating as ground. The CG-3000 sits inside, with the antenna fed through the roof-tiles, covered in silicon rubber. Tunes instantly 160-6 mtr and I'm getting great RST reports back from all over Europe and US. Tuning is a song: just give it some 10 Watt 'carrier' and after a few relay clicks the whole band comes to life. The CG-3000 is going to stay!!!
Would have given it a 5/5 but the manual is very poor (no schematics either)