SGC 230s are NOT commercial grade by any means but they are a very good
value for the money. Just take 2 of them if your life may be depending
on it working properly. They do seem to have a finite life when used on
fishing boats, might be reed relay contacts getting pitted, dont really
know but they last about 4 years when used heavily. Contrast that with
the JW Miller AT 2500 auto/manual tuners that have been running non
stop on these same boats since the late 1970s with no problems at all
and have the great feature of being manually tunable if autotune
functionality goes bad. If you want to see what a commercial grade
marine autocoupler looks, like open up a Collins 490M20. Gold plated
varicoils, etc etc. An SGC 230, although a good value for the money, is
cut from a different cloth.
Fishing boats beat the hell out of SSBs, radars, autopilots etc.
Reliable gear is the old stuff you still see on modern boats as back up
gear eg original Motorola Modar VHFs, Wood Freeman autopilots, Furuno
240 radars, etc. They get really old but still work great so if space
is available they are not tossed when more modern gear is installed.
Some Wood Freeman model 11 pilots have been in service more than 50
years with just occasional brush changes in the drive motor. The
original Motorola Modars can still go head to head with ANY modern VHF
as far as tight and sensitive receivers go, in fact I'd bet that the
Motos would win in a heavy RF environment like SF Bay. No disrespect
meant for the SGC 230. I own one myself. Just don't confuse it with a
commercial grade autocoupler. Different animals.