Sunday, November 10, 2024

Quick and dirty L match tuner

After having good success with the little wspr thing I put together, I decided to put up my old end-fed half-wavelength qrp antenna outside.  I still have a under-window coax connector, so strung it up between my workshop window and the garage across the driveway.  Got much nicer results.



I did notice though that it was resonating low - it was more like 13.5 rather than 14MHz.  I need to adjust it, but it was already dark.  So I decided to have a play with throwing together an antenna tuner real quick.

I took the 3D printed variable capacitor I made a while back, wrapped some wire around an inductor (making taps every once in a while, and threw it together on a little board I made the other day to hold my low-pass-filter.  I'm using an alligator clip to adjust the inductance (choosing different taps on the inductor).


I managed to tune it for 7MHz ok. 


Was having trouble dialing in 14MHz - I think I needed more inductor value choices, and maybe the ability to go lower on the capacitance.  I could have a play with some switches to switch caps in, but this was more just an excuse to put one together, as I've not built one before.  Probably won't use it, but was fun.




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