Time to get some ham bucks.

Getting the AT-100pro ready to sell.

About a month before the New Year I had a look around the shack and realized that I moved some items down to our new home that I used just as much as when they were at my old QTH.......these items were only taking up space and gathering dust. I decided it was time once again to put some radio items up for sale and send them on their way to someone who can use them. This gave me some "ham bucks" and to be honest I did not need much but what I did get was a new LDG 200proII antenna tuner and a new Endfed antenna which was the Ultimax DXtreme Endfed antenna   I did have the LDG AT-100pro (not the proII)  I say "did" because the LDG AT-100pro was sold. The reason I sold it was the LDG AT-100pro tuner is rated at 30 watts when operating digital modes. With propagation being what it is these days I have moved some of my operating toward FT8 digital. I would like to move a bit beyond 30 watts and the only way that can be done was to change out the LDG AT-100 pro to the LDG AT-200 proII tuner. A nice surprise was the LDG AT-200proII was able to tune a great match better than the LDG AT-100pro did. For example, I never had a decent SWR on 60M and for some reason when I switched to the LDG AT-200proII the tuner was able to tune 60m to a very decent SWR. I can now operate on this band without any SWR issue.  On the bands were a tuner was needed the AT-200ProII outperformed the previous AT-100pro. I have the interface cable from LDG that connects the tuner to my Icom 7610. This makes using the LDG tuner a breeze. The tuner when in tune will automatically reduce the Icom 7610 power to 10 watts. When a match is found it's stored in the LDG tuners memory using this interface cable I am able to operate on 30m and then go to 60m and when I start to transmit the LDG tuner reverts to the memory tuned position for 60m is a split-second, and I am good to go. If the band I chose does not have a stored memory tune then the tuner will perform a full tune at a reduced wattage of 10 watts. I just have to operate and the interface cable looks after the LDG tuner and getting me the best SWR. In my next post, I will look at the Ultimax DXtreme Endfed antenna.