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Reviews For: MFJ-9982

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : MFJ-9982
Reviews: 11MSRP: 699.95
Description:
Rated at 2500 watts
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00112.9
G4FTC Rating: 2007-07-23
Works Well Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I brought the MFJ-9982 at the 2006 Dayton Hamvention to replace an MFJ-989C now kept at holiday QTH. Although I never had any problems with the 989C, I thought it was spoilt by what were probably measures to reduce production costs which in turn gave it a cheap feel.

Originally I went to Dayton to specifically look at the Palstar AT-5K tuner - very nicely made but at a price. Looking around the MFJ-9982 caught my eye - the build quality seemed to be acceptable and with a price considerably cheaper than that of the Palstar I opted for the MFJ.

Having now owned the tuner for just over a year I have a good feel for what I consider its positive, negative and neutral points.



Positive points

- The use of Jackson slow motion drives for the two capacitor controls give these controls a nice "quality" feel.

- The incorporation of a PEP reading wattmeter - the calibration of which is quite accurate.

- The internal 9V PP3 battery for the wattmeter seems to last a long time. Although I have recently changed to an external wall-wart supply and removed the battery, the alkaline battery which I fitted at the time of purchase lasted for a complete year and was still going strong - despite on numerous occasions having left the battery switched on for periods of a number of days.

- The ferrite balun is at the input to the "T" network (as opposed to the output as in the MFJ-989C and many other tuners). The advantages of this topology are well documented in many of the Radio Handbooks.

- I've never experienced any flash-over problems. I'm also pleased to see that MFJ are now using the RF power handling capability in the description of this product instead of rather nebulous "input d.c power to the power amplifier" as used to describe the MFJ-989C as a 3kW Tuner.


Neutral Points

- The need to have a battery installed or an external PSU connected for the wattmeter to read - even in non-peak mode.

- The meter lamps only work with an external PSU

- The need to remove the top cover (12 screws) just to replace the battery. A separate battery access panel would be nice.

- The need to remove the battery if using the meter lighting with an external PSU to stop the external PSU from trying to charge the battery (as advised by MFJ Customer Services).

- No indicator to warn that the battery is on, although an indicator such as a LED would take more current than the metering circuit.

- With an external PSU connected the metering circuit is always on.

- I feel that both the variable capacitors could do with a little more capacity. However I haven't found an antenna which it can't bring to an acceptable match.

- The ventilation holes punched in the top cover are not the neatest I've seen (rough edges/burrs to the holes)

- The use of a plastic bush for the inductor turn counter spindle - at the moment seems to be fine but I don't know how it will fare after a longer period of time



Negative points

I don't feel that there is anything really negative about the tuner. It works and does the job!


Problems Experienced

The only problem which I had was when the metering circuit failed as the result of a thunderstorm. During fault finding I found that there are some errors in the manual, in particular the pin numbers on the LM324 IC used in the metering circuit are all wrong! The nice feature is that the LM324 is installed in a socket. The fault was that the two diodes in the SWR Bridge had failed, but having the LM324 mounted in a socket really made tracing and isolating the fault easy.


So would I buy another? Yes.