QRP Z-Match Manual Antenna Tuner 3-28 MHz for HAM Radio

I’ve used this several times and at home and on a couple of POTA activations. Worked great with a couple of different random wire antennas. Small size is easily packed. Easy to tune. See photo of it, QRP Labs QDX, & mouse for scale

I don’t know how well this works with the ham bands. However it works great with my homemade Cb whip. I built it with a 1:1 set at channel 19 and always had trouble getting picked up while dxing 38lsb. Since setting this up I’ve easily made contacts in Hawaii, Tennessee, Minnesota, and Ohio from Washington state with a stock President McKinley radio. I opened it up before I put it in my truck to make sure all the solder joints were good and they were.

This is the perfect little manual tuner for your QRP setup! It's as tall and as wide as the USDX+ QRP radio, and works like a champ! I was working stations two states away on 40 and 80 meters on a homemade NVIS antenna on only 5 watts!

They ran out of solder at the factory. I went to tune an antenna I knew was 1:1 on 40, and had to turn the right knob to its extreme to get any kind of dip in the light. I went back and read all of the reviews on here - and did I have the courage to open the lid and see if I too - like several others - had missing solder in the toroid pcb holes. Sure as shinoa - no solder, and barely any solder there. I think they have a box of these that a kid made in the factory who was like, "Nahhh, I don't want to put my solder gun tip all the way in there" and they're hoping we sort thru the units for them. It's a shame because this is a nice unit - super small. Just for those few joints - it's okay. I hope the seller sends me a new tested unit - and I'll change my review.

Beautiful look right out of the box. However, it failed completely when testing it against a 50 ohm load (should be able to find a perfect match) and an EFHW antenna presenting no more than 3:1 on any band. Willing to risk breaking the seal, since the electronics of this are not that complicated, I opened the unit. There I found two poorly soldered wires to the induction coil. #8 and #2. They were stripped but just not soldered and connected (see red arrows in picture). So, after fixing that and re-soldering some other thin connections. I retested and it worked just fine! One thing of note, their schematic is incorrect. There are only 3 large resistors, R2, R4, R6 (not 6), which the schematic shows as 100k, they aren't. They are 50k both in color code and with an ohm resistance test. R7 does run close to 1k (.999k). So if for some reason your unit does not work out of the box, this could be the reason...quality control. But it does work, and looks good too! By the way, this works perfectly with an LNR MTR3B and about the same size. Have fun!

I bought this thing just for kicks, but it's actually turning out to work quite well. I checked the Z Match's tuning with a traditional SWR Bridge, and it's within safe limits (usually 1.5:1 or better). Not sure on this, but looks like the LED gets it's power from the RF from the radio, so no batteries needed. This was just what I need for going out camping or kayaking, etc. and taking ham radio with me. The radio I used to test it is a uSDX HF Transciever I bought on Amazon a few months back for about fifty dollars. One thing about the Z Match Tuner ... be SURE you don't exceed 5 watts for tuning, 10 watts for operating. You'll likely burn out the innards of the tuner if you do. I looked inside. It's made of some very lower amperage rated components and is intended for QRP (under 10 watts) operation. If you use it as intended, should work quite well. Just don't try to tune your 200 watt Yaesu or Icom with it unless you turn the transmit power below 10 watts.

This is a good tuner. I was able to tune my TruSDX on a multiband antenna on multiple bands.

As received this antenna tuner would match a 50 ohm dummy load to no better than 3:1 SWR - not even close to acceptable. I opened it up, thus voiding the warranty, and repaired it. As noted in another review, the problem turned out to be faulty soldering on the T1 toroid. Some of the connections had little or no solder, and the toroid wire insulation was not removed at the solder joint. I started resoldering the T1 toroid connections and rechecking the SWR with the dummy load after resoldering each connection. After I resoldered the connection marked as 1/16 on the circuit board the tuner worked perfectly. So far I have been able use the tuner to match my 30 foot vertical to 1.5:1 SWR or better on the 40, 30, and 20 meter bands, and made a few contacts using 2 - 5 watts. This appears to be a well made, effective antenna tuner if you receive a good unit. But I'm only giving it three stars because customers should be receiving a product that does not require repair.

Cheap and simple to use. 5 watts QRP only. I literally ran 50 feet of speaker wire along my fence (4 feet high) and I can tune 20m and 40m (NVIS) no problem. LOVE IT. PS I do have a proper EFHW antenna, but don't have the space for it at home.

Antennen anpassgerät für Kurzwellenbänder leicht zu bedienen und für den IC 705 sehr gut geeignet Taugt

Tut was es soll. Vermisst habe ich aber eine Bypass Möglichkeit.

Das Gerät macht, was es soll. Die Größe der Knöpfe macht die Bedienung aber unbequem, wenn man öfter nach regelt. Die Verarbeitung ist exzellent. Die Bauteile sind Recht großzügig dimensioniert. Aber da die Bedienung im Vordergrund steht, nur drei Sterne.

totaler mist