The ground plate that you have should provide a good ground for the
tuner but you need to move the tuner to within a couple of feet of the
ground plate.
Run your antenna lead down to the tuner. As Bruce said "it will become
part of the antenna".

Trying to use a 15 foot 2" copper strap as a ground lead will not work
well on any frequency. It is much too long and has too much
inductance.

Your antenna has an impedance of only a few ohms on some frequencies.
Your 15 foot ground lead can have an impedance of many times that
depending on the frequency being used. The power gets divided between
your antenna feed impedance and the ground impedance. If the ground
impedance is equal to the antenna impedance, your power is divided
equally between the two. 1/2 of the power is dissipated in the ground
lead and not the antenna. If the ground lead impedance is higher than
the antenna impedance then most of the power goes to the ground lead
and not the antenna.

With the long ground lead that you have you are going to get lots of
RF that gets into wires that you don't want it to. Some of it can make
its way back into the radio, power leads etc. and partially shut down
the radio.

You may have other problems with the radio or system also but you
surly have a too long ground lead problem.

Regards
Gary






On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:37:04 -0600, "Keith"
wrote:

OK, let's see if I can give feedback to all of your notes.

Yes, the radio is set to "tune", and on full power. I will double check to
make sure the tech didn't change either of the settings. I do not know what
the SWR's were. The bad part was that I had been trying to hook up with this
guy for awhile... and I wasn't here when he did the checks.

When I hit "tune", I sure don't hear any clicks or any other evidence that
it's doing anything. The control cable was the one thing I DIDN'T do myself,
so I'm beginning to suspect that as Larry pointed out. I remember that topic
on here before. The little pins were so tiny I couldn't hardly see them much
less solder them! I think I'll work on this as Larry suggests.

The Antenna is a Digital fiberglass... don't remember the exact length, but
what the folks around here recommended... The boat is fiberglass, a Krogen
42. The 2" copper foil runs about 12-15' from the tuner on the flying bridge
down to a big Wunderbar (sp?). The bar is a scintered bronze plate, about
24" x 6" or so. Nothing else is connected or grounded to this, except that I
also have a 2" foil strip that runs to the radio and connects to the ground
on the back, as shown in in ICOM installation manual.

I think I'm going to redo the control cable as Larry suggests, and go from
there.

"Bruce in Alaska" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Keith" wrote:

Well, I had a tech come out and check out my system. M-802 with the
automatic antenna tuner. He said that the radio is only putting out
about 50
watts, and should be putting out 100-150 watts, so he thinks something
is
wrong with the radio (new, right outta the box...)

He also mentioned that the automatic antenna tuner should be closer to
the
ground plate. In the Icom manuals, they said to mount it as close to the
antenna as possible, so it's on the flying bridge, and the conductor
from
the tuner to the antenna is about 3'. I can move it about halfway
between
the antenna and the ground plate in the engine room. Who's right?

The final thing is that I ran a 2" ground foil strip from the radio to
the
ground plate as well, as required by the ICOM manual... he said this
isn't
necessary and should be disconnected. I'm really confused now.

Help!

At this point, I'm going to take the radio in to the dealer and have it
checked out and anything corrected as needed, then see how things work
before I start moving the tuner around.



Hello Keith,


I don't know the guy you hired to do your HF Radio work, but from the
sounds of things, he isn't one of the greatest Tech's to walk down the
dock. First thing, is to transmit into a Dummy Load, and see if the
radio is capable of putting out it's rated power, into a perfect antenna.
If yes, the problem isn't in the radio. If no, then the radio needs to
be realigned. (tuned) Second, understand that any SSB Radio maybe
transmitting rated power, and it doesn't nessesarily show up on a
non-peak reading Wattmeter. There are many reasons to have the
autotuner mounted at this polace or that place. Most are related to
what type of RF Ground System your vessel has. From a strictly RF
standopoint, closer to the Ground Plate is better, and 2" copper foil
is minimal for any connection to a RF Ground System. what is the length
of the copper foil in feet? The longer the foil, the worse the ground
impedance will be, and the harder the tuner will have to work to tune
the antenna. You don't tell us anything about the vessel construction,
RF Ground System, or antenna system. Knoing these would be critical
in advising you on your installation.
Points of interest.
1. If your foil is longer than 3 or 4 Feet, then what you are asking
that autotuner to do the almost impossible. Think it as if the tuner
wan't sitting at ground but at some point above ground and that point is
the length of the copper foil. Lets say 15 Ft, as you say it is on the
Flying Bridge, and that is say 15 Ft above Waterline. Now you
effectivly have the tuner in the middle of a diopole antenna and trying
to reconcile impedances on both antenna and ground at the same time.
BAD IDEA. The firmware in the tuner only looks at the antenna
impedance, with refernce to the Ground lug on the tuner. If the ground
lug isn't at RF Ground, then the tuner firmware gets REALLY FUNNY DATA
from it's internal sensers and it doesn't deal with funny data well.
2. If the tuner is moved to a place, say 3 ft from the RF Ground, then
you must add wire to the antenna, and that wire becomes part of the
antenna, and therefore gets tuned by the tuner. This is a GOOD THING,
if people, or Ground don't come to close to it while you are
transmitting. By adding wire (length) to the antenna you are effectivly
lowering the frequency that the tuner will tune. This again is a GOOD
THING, on a plastic or wood vessel.
3. As Larry and Jim have stated, check and BE SURE, that the radio is
in TUNER MODE, and not THRU MODE. If your in THRU MODE, the tuner isn't
even going look at your antenna, let alone try and tune it.


More information!


Bruce in alaska
--
add a 2 before @