Exactly! Well put.
Dave AB7E On 9/30/2024 1:23 PM, Al Lorona wrote:
I've never understood what "The antenna tuner does not tune the antenna" even means. The reason people say this might stem from the mistaken belief that the resonant half-wave dipole is somehow the best because of its length. But there's nothing about a half-wave dipole that makes it radiate any better than a wire of some other length. There are a lot of hams out there that are dead-set against using a tuner of any kind, feeling that the naked antenna must work without any assistance from the outside world. I suppose there's a kind of purist thinking behind that notion. I suppose there could also be a fear of losses in a tuner (which are usually unfounded, by the way). I have often found that more consequential losses elsewhere in the system are overlooked by the same tuner-averse hams. If a person has a fundamental problem with antenna tuners, they must also object to what the output matching network of the final amplifier in their transmitter does to bring the transmitter's output impedance to 50 ohms. Would they say, "My transmitter's output matching network doesn't tune the power transistors"? I mean, what does that even mean? Without that network, nothing would work. This mantra that we hear over and over-- 'my antenna tuner does not tune my antenna'-- doesn't say anything important. We may as well say, "My sunglasses do not tune the sun," or "My salt shaker does not tune my mashed potatoes." Is the point they're making that a capacitor down in the shack acts differently than a capacitor up at the antenna? If so, they're wrong. Al W6LX/4
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