Dick, A REAL LONG time ago when I needed my first tuner I bought a
military surplus ARC-5 transmitter for $5 USD and removed the roller
inductor and final plate tuning capacitor. [Actually, I bought 3 ARC-5s:
one for 80, one for 40 both converted to XTAL control, and one for the
tuner and spare 1625s. Nice NOVICE CW rigs.]

Made a real nice L-tuner at 125 watts continuous duty!!

Hmmm .... where are those old ARC-5s when someone needs them??

Deacon Dave, W1MCE

Dick wrote:

In a time long, long ago, there were no commercial antenna tuners that
I can recall. The first commercial tuner I remember was the Johnson
Viking. Everyone I knew made their own. You just went to the surplus
store, and got a coil and capacitor that looked about right, and tried
it. No one owned any equipment to measure them anyway. We never used
relays. Maybe a switch, or just change the coil. The ARRL handbook
and Antenna Handbooks still have diagrams for antenna tuners. Also
the Hints and Kinks manuals, among many others.

Dick - W6CCD

On 4 Aug 2003 12:51:51 -0700, (Art Unwin KB9MZ)
wrote:



Mark,
What sort of range of impedance matching would this provide?
How would you switch bands and what voltage/capacitor range
would be required?
I suspect you would have to have several relays to pick up various
points on the oatmeal inductor as well as a rotation method
for the capacitor

Seems like you have something specific in mind that you would put in a box
for safety reasons. Are the specifics shown somewhere for people to copy?
Art