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Reviews For: LDG AT-1000Pro

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : LDG AT-1000Pro
Reviews: 57MSRP: 599
Description:
Building on the success of the AT-1000, LDG Electronics has refined and expanded its 1KW tuner. The AT-1000Pro has an Auto mode that automatically starts a tuning cycle when the SWR exceeds a limit you set.

Operates at any power level between 5 and 1,000 watts peak. Relay protection software prevents tuning at greater than 125 watts. 2 Antenna connections. Tunes from 1.8 to 54.0 MHz (including 6 meters). Tuning time usually under 4 seconds, transmitting near a frequency with stored tuning parameters, under 0.2 seconds. 2000 memories.

2-Year Warranty. All cables included.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.ldgelectronics.com/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00573.8
K2SRB Rating: 2011-05-24
Excellent Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've played with many tuners. This one tunes my 80M loop (a mystery antenna)wonderfully. 6M to 160M. I do admit that 160M is a bit more difficult for the LDG 1000 Pro and it whines for a while (10 seconds?)Yet it gives me an VSWR below 2.0. All other bands are below 1.5....1.2...1.1 Its got to be a mismatch of equipment for poor reviews as with any other review.
KK2DOG Rating: 2011-04-09
EXCELLENT ! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Rig: IC-756PRO
Amp: Ameritron AL-80B
Antenna: Hustler 6-BTV Vertical

I run 700-1000 watts all day long through this tuner and it doesn't even flinch.

Mike KK2DOG
Owner/Admin: www.hamwave.com
NM6E Rating: 2011-01-27
Not Impressed and NOISEY! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
TIME OWNED: NOT EVEN 24 hours...

The same day I acquired an ACOM amp model 1011 rated for 800 watts, i ran to my local distributor for the LDG AT-1000Pro Version 2.

My antenna is an S9V 43' wire vertical with lots of radials and a 4:1 UNUN. I have a Kenwood TS-590.

When you first power the tuner with your barefoot HF rig, you need to 'walk' the tuner to all areas of a band for it to find a sweet spot and store the settings in memory.

WOW, was a I shocked at the noise it generated going through it's iterations but its part of the process but LOUD!

My S9V is 'perfectly' tuned on 12/10m, flat across the band so I never expected it to need 'tuning' but read on..

I started last night on the low bands 80/40 barefoot and got all the memories automatically stored. I didn't bother with the 20-10m, I would do that later..

The thing worked fine on the low bands and with the ACOM pushing 500-800 watts, tuning was less than a second with a dit or two, thanks to the pre-work of 100 watts and walking the tuner around the bands.

Well, this afternoon I decided to see how the amp would work on 10m.. I left the AT-1000 Pro Version 2.0 in line.

I did a 'pre-tune' with out the AMP operational and no issues, came write up flat.. OK , lets start setting up the amp.

Well, I only got to 400 watts when the AT-1000 started flashing/clackety/clackety/clackety bang! And then a funny "Smell" of burnt equipment..

What the?!?! I never made it beyond 300 watts AND MY ANTENNA IS PERFECTLY TUNED! It should have been an easy match as noted a few seconds ago with 100 watts!

Called LDG and they are more than happy to either repair it or replace it, even though I had just bought it less than 24 hours ago.. Oh, and I have to pay the shipping for them to see it in a 2-week turnaround window.

Ok, I called the local distributor and told them if I could get another by swapping it... NOPE, Out of Stock, I bought the last one... There goes another week or two for them to get new ones..

I told the dealer I would drive over their and drop it off for and wait for a new one to be shipped (once they place an internal order)....

$500 + Tax, up in smoke in less than 24 hours..

Mind you, everything is grounded etc etc.

As final test, now that I had just boxed up the AT-1000 Pro, I connected my coax from my 43' S9V directly to the AMP ANT connector...

Guess what, HAPPY MATCH with the radio/AMP and Antenna, 800+ watts....

BUT I DID HAVE A REVELATION WHILE DRIVING TO THE DEALER!!!

I got to the dealer and said "Refund Please!"

For $100 bucks less, I ordered a new Butternut HF9V Vertical that I KNOW I CAN TUNE to my frequencies and get 'proper power transfer' rather than smoking a tuner....

For the 80m band, I have no issues walking out to extend the coil to tune for 80 CW or slide the coil up for 75 SSB and I know the AMP, Radio will be happy... AND NO NOISE!!!!!

But alas, another revalation, make my S9V a dedicated 80m vertical for CW only! HF9V for 75m SSB!

I was skeptical after having read the reviews here but I decided to try it out and I can say that it made me happy with the difficult bands 80/40/30 for a few hours but bombed at the easy stuff on 10m where the antenna is great, alone...
VK5ALX Rating: 2011-01-27
Will not tune 6 meters Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Works very well on all HF band but spits the dummy on 6 meters. Even though the 6 meter antenna is very close to resonance at 50.1 MHz the tuner click clacks away and finally gives up with all 5 lights flashing. My hope was that the tuner would extend the antenna bandwidth up into 52 MHz. Not so.
Even with calibrated 50 and 100 ohm loads connected to the antenna socket the tuner quickly finds a match on all HF frequencies but not with 6 meters.
While the 6 mtr problem is not a dealbreaker for me it would have been nice if the tuner performed as advertised.
LDG were not particularly helpful. Their answer was "6M is odd sometimes"
Because the tuner quickly matches my horizontal HF loop antenna so well on all HF bands except 160, I was tempted to give a "5" rating. But because it's advertised as covering thru six meters I had to take a point off.
It certainly beats all the repeated inductor cranking on my old MFJ box.
KX9A Rating: 2011-01-08
Great so far Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Picked up an open box Pro at AES a few weeks ago, replacing an (original series) MFJ Diff-T. I'm using it with with a S9 vertical and 40M OCFD. No problems loading either antenna on any band I've tried including 75M on each with 800w. . Each is fed with a 4:1 Balun Designs unit. (Well, no more 75M QRO on the OCF - don't want to kill the balun, but I couldn't resist testing!)

As a bonus for me, while I did have what I thought was feedline radiation with the MFJ, all is now clean. With the MFJ I used to set off the upstars and downstairs CO detectors with as little as 250w, now not a peep even when QRO on any band.

Nice job LDG!
W4JAH Rating: 2010-09-12
works wonderful Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
after reading all the neg. reports I guess some don't know how to use these tuners. I now have two and run them at 1kw. Not a problem. also just added the new chips and works even better. Meter are very accurate. Match up with my Bird meters. Nice job LDG, I also have the 897 tunerand it works perfect. Thanks for a great product at a affordable price.
K9CTB Rating: 2010-07-29
Great Auto-Tuner! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Just received my 1000Pro and it works wonderfully. If you are serious about using an automatic antenna matcher, this relatively new technology is amazing. I have a simple dipole at 50' and it is cut for about 4.5MHz, as it is used primarily for MARS operations. I have found that the 1000Pro works well with this antenna for the 40 meter phone nets, 30 meter CW, 20 meter SSTV and PSK-31 as well as 10 meter hoping and praying (hihi).

Thing is, you're going to have to understand the importance of grounding your shack properly or you're going to have trouble with pretty much any of the microprocessor-based tuners. Most people who b**ch, moan and complain about the tuner either don't have their shack properly grounded or they're trying to match an antenna that's in their attic or worse, a loop of wire around the ceiling molding of their radio room! It won't work, Clem .... And if you're going to play with a dipole and "window" line, make sure you are using an impedance transformer (sometimes improperly called a "balun") and ensure that your dipole is long enough so that the current maxima on the feedline is *outside* your shack, or you'll have problems. In other words, don't throw a dipole with 10' legs out your window at an elevation of 15 feet and then expect it to match on 75 meters! Bottom line is, keep the RF out of your shack if you're gonna run one of these gems, or you'll be complaining forever and worse, you'll give bad reviews of a great piece of gear. It surprises me how many hams have no clue what they're doing and because of this, some wonderful gear gets bad reviews. Many hams take a really close look at the reviews provided on E-ham, and this is wonderful. We just need to ensure that we know what we're doing before we log on to post a review. It's not fair to the good hams who use these reviews in making a choice to buy gear that's out there. It's also unfair to the manufacturers who build the gear.

Now, LDG could have shielded the tuner somewhat better than they did. The chassis of the AT-100Pro is pretty flimsy, and it has a lot in common with the MFJ ... simple inverted-U construction with no RF gaskets. A savvy ham can fix this with some coax braid and screws. Like I said, shack grounding is imperative ... you simply can't do a half-vast job and expect things to work well, if at all.

There are some excellent tutorials by very competent hams on the subject of equipment and radio room grounding available on the web. Some right here on E-ham! Take a good look at 'em and see if you can make some improvements before you call the tuner a piece of junk. Insulting? I don't mean it to be. But these manufacturers work very hard to provide we hams with the best of the newest technology. The least we can do is try to evaluate these offerings within their performance envelope before we lash out in uninformed anger.

73 and good luck,

K9CTB
W6PQN Rating: 2010-07-07
Good Tuner with excellent company customer service Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
The AT-1000Pro works as advertised. Follow the instructions, observe the operating specifications and stay within the operating parameters and you will be satisfied.
While using a commercially manufactured coax cable between the tuner and the lightning arrestor to my antenna, the coax failed (looks like it might have arced over at the tuner end). Before I could switch my transmitter off, the high SWR caused some internal failures in the tuner and toasted the antenna 1 SO 259 on the back of the unit .
I sent it back to LDG with an explanation that although the unit was still in warranty, the failure was not the fault of LDG.
They repaired the unit no charge and returned it to me.
Subsequently, while testing the returned unit it failed again. This time with out any external cause from my equipment.
I once again sent it back for repair. They determined that it couldn't be repaired and sent me a new unit....NO CHARGE!
If that isn't superb customer service, I have no idea what is.
I also have an LDG-200. It has performed flawlessly and was the reason why I bought the AT-1000 when I added an amplifier to my rig.
I can see no reason not to choose this unit. The price is good and the specs are great.
KC2MR Rating: 2010-07-06
Meter needs use of flashlight! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I have a 1000 Pro purchased in September 2009 that works well but the meter lamp died. A new one is $12 plus a minimum of 1 hour labor to dismount and disassemble meter to install new bulb. Must be a common complaint since LDG put an instructional video on youtube. Will new bulb last another 9 months? Nice if they would have sent me a free bulb under the warranty.
G0JKZ Rating: 2010-07-01
Complete Rubbish Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this tuner because of its power handling capability.... what a waste of money.

I was using an MFJ-993b and it tuned my doublet fine with its balanced feed on every band 160-6m. Then I bought a qro linear. The 993 is only rated at 300w and the linear would have smoked it in seconds so I bought the LDG. I knew it didn't have a balanced output so I also bought a 4:1 external balun.

Plugged it in using the very short cables supplied, and off it went. Clickety Clack, Clickety Clack Clickety Clack Clack Clack FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH....

The only band it could tune was 28mhz.... It struggled to get a match anywhere else. I thought at first the balun was NFW (not f***ing working for those who have never seen the abbreviation before), but when I plugged in the MFJ into the same setup it was very happy to tune everywhere, exactly as it should. So that eliminated a balun fault, and some on air testing showed that it was all working as it should.
Back to the LDG... so, tune it up on 10m, fire up the linear.... it says that the linear is peaking at 200w.... hmm, is my linear dead? Put an external power meter in line and ran a dummy load... 800w at full output so no dead linear.

Conclusion... either I have a duff unit or all the bad reviews I have read are true... I just wish I saw them before parting with my cash. Still in dispute with the retailer who says I must be doing something wrong.......

As for what to buy next to replace it... I might go back to manual tuners, the Palstar AT1K looks like a real solution and I have tried out a couple of them before, one at my club and one at a friends house.