Don’t spend your life tuning amps. Do it once with sticky labels and forget!
I’ve recently un-mothballed my Ameritron which has seen good service and delivers 200 watts for 10w drive – ideal for PSK31 and other low-power digital modes. This amp will go further and deliver 400 watts for 30 minutes key-down so it’s ideal for full legal power in the UK.
Anyway, flicking from 80, 40, 30 and 20m during the grey line with the AL811, I’ve discovered that I have never mastered the speedy band switching that some operators appear to have worked out. So I developed my visual system(!) using sticky labels tuned against a 50 ohm dummy load to calculate the fastest (approximate) setting for each band. It works blooming marvelous too!
Since a picture tells a thousand words, I won’t bore you any more. Here’s a close up! https://www.m0mcx.co.uk/pictures/Ameritron_AL-811X.JPG
[Later] – I can’t get 10m to tune. Maybe it’s not an export model? In which case, according to sources on the internet, to convert a non-export model to an export model, one needs to make a mod by cutting a wire. This will enable 12 & 10 meters on the Aux switch. I hate engineering! 🙂
Cheers, Callum.