Antenna Tuner Question

[prcguy]

Unless you are using a small super inefficient antenna where you are actually starving the receiver for signal, using an antenna tuner will not improve your signal to noise ratio. Bringing signals up 6dB with a tuner means nothing unless you can improve the SNR.

One S unit are 6dB, so 400% stronger signal. That's good enough for me. I have a tuner never unboxed since 10 years. Maybe I should try it if it will give me that kind of improvement.

/Ubbe

 

[Ubbe]

Unless you are using a small super inefficient antenna where you are actually starving the receiver for signal....

That's exactly what I'm doing. Living in a valley with hills all around and using a small loop and a 7 meter wire will for sure not feed the receivers with saturated signals. I probably won't get any higher bids if I sell a 10 year old tuner, even if it's never been unpacked, so why not put it to use and see if it improves anything.

/Ubbe

 

[ka3jjz]

It certainly isn't going to do any damage, so why not try it? Mike

 

[valdyjr]

And regardless of the outcome, we will all learn.

 

[Ubbe]

It turned out to be a Thieking & Koch Antenna Coupler DE-32. I can either tweak the two controls on the coupler or tweak the front end gain and IF gain on the receiver and achive the same result. SDRUno says it's 2-3dB greater SNR with the coupler compared to having it bypassed, but that's probably a result of that it measures a different spectrum with and without the coupler. It's impossible to hear any difference.

I used a wire I tossed out thru the window without any balun. I will try a vertical later on. The wire has almost all signals fading up and down 20dB in strenght, we don't have any AM transmitters local in my country, so that also makes it harder to tell a difference with the coupler in use. I used a msi.sdr dongle and a DX394 and they where pretty much equal in performance.

With the coupler in use I can have the IF gain set to auto as it then seems to work as it should. Without the coupler I have to set the IF gain manually to equal the result with the coupler. So either tweak one thing or the other, but so far the coupler made no difference.

/Ubbe