SOTA tuner

I built a SOTA tuner kit over the weekend.  This little tuner is very small and matches end fed half wave (EFHW) antennas from 40m through 15m.  I had a chance to test it out today while taking our new grill for it's maiden voyage with a nice cut of beef!

Setup on a patio table in the backyard was my 20m DSW-II at about 4 watts, eBay Li-Ion 9800 mAh battery pack, and Palm mini paddles. The antenna was 33' of teflon hookup wire deployed as an inverted-L with about 18' vertical and the rest horizontal supported by two 20' fishing poles.  Attached to the he SOTA tuner was a 17' counterpoise. 

The tuner didn't have any trouble finding a match.  The adjustment was a little touchy but the LED went almost completely out.  I plan to add another foot of wire which should help make the match not so touchy.

As the grill did it's thing I tune around 14.060 and hear quite a few signals.  Good sign for a new tuner and antenna!  I hear F6ECS/qrp calling cq and give him a call.  Jack answers and gives me a 559 with qsb signal report.  I return a 549.  I had to cut it short for dinner but consider the first test of the SOTA tuner with EFHW a success!