On Sep 12, 3:04 pm, "The Shadow" wrote:
A friend bought a G5RV Lite and has a Kenwood TS-480SAT, hoping the ATU in
the Kenwood would be able to tune all bands.
But only two bands would tune - 6m and 10m.

He then borrowed a G5RV Jr. Same results.

So question is does G5RV's in general require an external tuner with a wider
matching range than the typical internal ATU's in late model rigs??

The Shadow usually knows. (;-)

Sir Cranston: One answer to your question is "it depends". It depends
on the radio and it's ATU. My old TS-940S(AT) autotuner successfully
handled several Field Day G5RVs which had gawdawful high SWRs on most
bands.

The direct answer to your question is that according to it's published
Kenwood specs the autotuner in the TS-840SAT can't handle SWRs above
3:1 which immediately precludes it's ability to match G5RVs on most
bands. As Mark put it it's a "line flattener", not a real antenna
tuner. Annoying marketing gimmick.

My FT-847 doesn't have an ATU which is OK with me because I use an
external LDG AT-11MP ATU which I'm convinced will match almost *any*
antenna to the radio. Did a proper job of matching couple more
recently used G5RVs. The MP is out of production and has been by
replaced by the even better AT-100Pro. A couple hunded bucks well
spent.

http://www.ldgelectronics.com/index.php

Brian w3rv