Heathkit Tuner Question

[Gerald C. Lemay]

My take on this is that tuner really didn't really become popular station accessories
until the advent of solid-state rigs. That would be sometime in the mid 70's. Solid-state
finals don't tolerate high SWR as well as tube-type rigs and need some type of means to
tune out reactances. The ARRL handbook had tuners described way before then but you
pretty much had to roll your own. Johnson had a fairly popular item which they called a
matchbox. Drake also had the MN-4 and MN-2000. Don't believe Heathkit had a tuner until
the late 70's (?). As a Novice back in '75, I had a Dentron Super Tuner which many people
were using at the time.

Alan KB7MBI wrote:

> I am in the process of getting a SB301/401 TWINS. In looking up accessories
> it does not appear that there were any tuners that matched that series as in
> other radio lines. I was curious if folks back then did a lot of homebrewing
> for tuners or did they just go with popular tuners that were available at
> that time. Or heck maybe I just missed the tuners available thru Heatkit at
> that time. Thanks in advance for your feedback--Alan KB7MBI
>
> ps I am up for a little history here if you are willing to share
>
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