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Paul has some great products. However, if he is still the same today as when my wife and I dealt with him regarding a warranty issue in 2014, well he should remove himself from dealing with the public. He was greatly lacking in public relations skills. These products are made for "amateur radio" and "amateur radio operators." I was first licensed in 1971 as a general. Then advanced followed by extra. Have always built my own antennas, amplifiers, etc. From hf yagis to 4 element quads. I could say more, but others have made the same point. Still, they are great products!

I had a similar run-in with "PAUL" and we went round and round about his beloved balanced tuner not being able to give me a match on 160M. It was a 3:1 match and then the pissing match started that I needed to shoot about 10-20 watts of carrier to get that magic dip. I refused to accept his method and wanted to return the tuner and he said "FINE" there will be a 15% re-stock fee. So I shipped his POS tuner back. Really wonderful support system there

I have been teaching myself about the manual tuners available on the market. Watching this has reaffirmed my decision to buy a Comet cat-300, made in Japan.

Could you have been the victim of a lazy tech? Just replace what is obvious then ship it out, repeat when the unit returns. I've never had any dealings with Paul but it could be a case of defending his staff although being rude is not necessary at all. I had an AT2K for awhile, very nice bit of kit, worked well. Like you was in military, not US, always do a performance check by the EO/TO after repair as there may be something else in need of attention.

Odd that this video appeared in my feed. I bought a AT-4K a week ago. I sent it back to HRO for a refund the following day. Reason being that the unit appeared to sustain some internal shipping damage. The box it was shipped in was in very poor condition on arrival and the packing materials looked like I had bought it used off eBay. When in the "tuned" position there was a better than 10dB loss in receive, during the tuning process the output cap did virtually nothing and the expected values were nowhere near what was listed in the manual. The antenna I used for testing was a Buckmaster OCF dipole with an SWR of 1.7:1 where I was testing. I currently have the AT1500CV and it has worked just fine for the last 18+ years. I'm going to hold judgement on my AT-4K experience and maybe buy another at a later date.

I once herd of a guy who melted the nylon balance stud insulators on a bt1500a and blue lighting appeared 😂 when the studs shorted to the case. but obviously it was not a perfect load and possibly running more then amateur limits 2x3cx1500=big mess of tuner case n wiring 😊 but to be fair the tuner was repaired with a hack saw and new porcelain insulators and a piece of uhmd drywall screwed into the case to hopefully prevent future shorting. Special John ypur one of a kind 😊

This repair was apparantly not examined very carefully and like you said a hundred watts was never driven through the unit. This is very poor, very poor, quality control. This person should have reported to his supervisors. If the business continues to get bad reviews, there products loose acceptance by the public in the field of radio communications. They can't afford bad publicity. Write a review and put it on their site. Glad you were able to troubleshoot and confirm their failure, in doing the repair. You did great on your side. Thanks Billy.....Albq. N.M. 3 / 18 / 2023

Thank u DON for info. i purchased a 40 years old tuner BARKER & WILLIAMSON. Its the Canadian company that palstar bought and they make the AT tuners with the same circuit diagrams. B&W TUNERS easyly handles 1.5KW continuous carrier, no time limit. Work like a Tank. Very rare item to buy. SV8DJW.

A couple of months ago I happily ordered a differential capacitor from Palstar, one they use in their antenna tuner and the one I received had a big scratch in the fiberglass plate on one end and the butterfly stater plate not centered. :( I paid a lot for it too.

Well done don..

Had a similar experience with Paul. Said I should not be running balanced feed line into the shack... Why then are there terminals on the back of the tuner for balanced feed-line??

Shame this happened to you Don. I am very happy with my AT4K and I have many friends who are happy Palstar customers. I would (I will) buy from Palstar again. From time to time all support arms mess up, and it would seem that this is what happened here. Only other remote possibility is that the open connection crept in during transport. (it would still have to be a bad connection) Tech support departments take a lot of unfair abuse, and sometimes become jaded. This may be the explanation here... Hopefully Palstar received this as a wake up call to always take their customers at face value and to be wary of judging their customer to be a Lid.

Obrigado meu amigo PY2 VIP

yup, no schematics, no calibration instructions, they tell you that they are sure you love the hobby but you the customer are an idiot. $100 dollars round trip shipping and they say there is nothing wrong with it. It looks like high quality and when they work they work like high quality, when they don't work it is because the customer is an idiot. does any one out there have a clue as how to calibrate the meters.

Hm....I'd say forget the Paul slam cuz the tuner itself is likely one of the top lines!! It is true these are not made with parts like those of the JV KW matchbox days. But these parts are likely as good as one can get w.o pricing the unit out of the market. My experience with AT5K: well....a few days ago I put up a FW 80M sloping delta (about 88; per side) fed with 450 ohm window line. I feed at the apex....UGH!!!! That I believe to be a high voltage point and NOT GOOD!! Anyhoo....I added length to my feedling to move the voltage peak (yes...there is SWR on the feed line as it is not matched to the antenna). EVEN SO: The torroid in the tuner SATURATES as measured by a rise in what starts to be a 1:1 as I blab! If i reduce poiwer the swr does not rise as fast. I must immediately RETUNE the caps to bring the SWR back 1:1 and with reduced power the swr stailzes. One might say" Yah!!! Misapplication. Well....ah...$1K for a tuner and the damn thing gives me grief when for the first time in years i want to do window line!!!! Crap!!! Guys are now telling me to make a current balun (like the one in the tuner) and connect to the COAX OUT of the tuner. IOW: BYPASS the questionable internal torroid. But what the heck!!!! I didn't buy this doo dah to end up having to hand it a crutch and put it in a wheel chair!!!!! BOTTOM LINE": DIY!!!! Build your own matchbox and forget these ham junkers!!!! Yah...parts hard to come by. Its worth the hunt and peck!!!! Or....give the ole JV KW Matchbox a try, I have one but IT ALSO ARC'ED!! You can glean my antenna stuff does present chllenges....but what kind of tuner might I need!!!"" Something from a broadcast station??? OUY VEY!! ;bummed Dave' in Grass Valley WA6PBJ

might have happed in shipping.

I just bought the LA-1k & HF Auto Tuner at a cost of over $5K. Running bareft 200 watts from my Yaesu 101MP (beautiful rig), my LDG tuned my antennas perfectly. That damned HF Auto Tuner was "UNABLE TO TUNE" after it ran thru the tuning cycle. I didn't even get around to using the amp, which has been stuck on standby! And now the xmit & rcv on my Yaesu is messed up. Rather than deal w/ it, I'm thinking of just getting the LDG AT-1000 ProII tuner & using that w/ the LA-1k. The idea of getting a linear has been rough going so far. I think the amp is OK. They all work basically the same. And I'll be getting the data cable as well. So, I'll keep it for now, try to figure it out & get the LDG tuner (costing 3X less, I might add!). What a nightmare!

So Palstar never even hooked it up? Absolutely ridiculous. So for those that like to read the comments, Don here is an Advanced class licensed Amateur. This class is no longer available but was one step down from Amateur Extra, the highest class in Amateur radio and by no means an easy class license to get. Obviously Don has skills. I've talked to Paul on the phone before and he's a typical narcissist that believes everyone is below him in intelligence.

I'm very happy with my AT4K after many years of use. I'm replacing the meter bulb now. I did some electronic repair at International Crystal 60 years ago (Technology passed them up) and so many unexpected unusual situations occur and are so frustrating. Your cold solder joint seems one of them. The solder joint sure looked good in your video when measuring the resistance. The tuner worked at the repair shop probably because the shipping/handling made contact and return shipping undid the joint.. After your resoldering, glad it works now, enjoy the tuner. K5BTV

So what else is there to get besides a Palstar 2k or 5k on the market. mfj and auto tuners are not my thing.

Beautiful

I bought a Palstar balun to connect to a delta loop I was going to make. Having made the loop I was unable to get my Palstar atu to tune it. Thinking it was the way I had made the loop I gave up on it. Sometime later I decided to open up the balun box and saw two wires held together with tape. I asked Palstar to send me a circuit diagram of the balun which they did. Where the tape was should have been a capacitor joining the two wires. When I opened the tape there was no capacitor and the wires were not even joined. Palstar sent me the capacitor which I added and the balun then worked. How that balun got through quality control beats me.

Not sure which is the worst after watching this video, Mighty Fine Junk or Palstar.

Well, very interesting. I spent the last week or so reviewing and making a decision on a new ATU and was about to order an AT2K from the factory. What a pity! Looks so good and robust and yet all of that is wasted by "grumpy arrogance and finger pointing" He also insulted you suggesting that "you get someone who knows what he is doing" to help you. I have been licensed for 50 years and smile when I hear folks talking about "tuning their antenna with an ATU" The antenna is NOT being "tuned"......the "box" is merely matching the impedance of the antenna to the TX output impedance of 50 ohms. The box used to be called a "transmatch" which more accurately describes its function. Going back to my original idea of finding a clean, 40 year old Dentron MT-3000A. This AT4K could NEVER have been tested with RF - heck, it didn't even pass a signal to the RX. Very disappointing because they look so good. If the main RF input line was cold soldered then what else was not done properly. Thanks for saving me from wasting my money. 73 VE7CY

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I was considering their HF-Auto tuner but after watching this I'll never buy a palstar product. Even if you were an idiot, there's absolutely no excuse for Paul to have treated you so poorly. Further, he's obviously incompetent himself if he's blaming his customer while such a basic problem with his product is soaring right over his head. And, you're obviously not an idiot. I'm glad you were eventually able to fix your problem despite palstar turning out to be such a crappy company.

I played flute for this. :)

that doesnt sound like it was fun? but on the bright side, seeing Hank Arron on ur book case brought back memories. when i was little, dad took us kidz to all the Milwaukee Braves home games.. back then, we could lean over the dug out and ask the players for their autograph.. and they always did it. I got Hank's and Warren Spaunn's and Eddie Mathews' too! these days kid's have to pay to get an autograph!? it's not the same world i grew up in. Good u got ur tuner "tuning" '73

Seems Palstar is going the same way as MFJ.... very bad. XE1ZLG

Expensive junk.

This is not as great but I do like the songs

Seems to me it was the poor soldering in the first place that caused the failure. Never buy there products again, and tell others to run when they see them coming. I mean if could not even receive, that is just wrong.

This is poorly did my church did better

W.O.W What a wonderful service !!!

If you are getting arcing across the plates of the cap(s) that is because of a very high voltage potential between them. This is indicative of a high power level, very high antenna impedance or both. Lower your power and the plates will probably not arc over. The arcing typically occurs when one is trying to load up on 160 or 80 meters with an antenna that is too short for that band.I would say the solder joint probably was missed when they removed the capacitor(s). Removing the capacitor(s) might have required the unsoldering of that connection to put a replacement cap in there.

i bought a new bt tuner brand new and out of the box it did not work , took it back to hro and bought another brand. bill

I really want to try the R30A but so many reports of Paul's arrogance scares me away.

Nice job fixing your tuner. I have the same tuner so I'll be cracking it open to look for bad solder areas. By the way, the ARRL once told me to get a new hobby after talking to them about my restricted antenna situation. Lol some people are just stupid. 😂

they pushed too far they just won't leave us alone if it's a fight that they want it's a fight that they will get it's time now to wake up the sleeping giant

This is your home, our home, it is America. We serve the same King of Kings and walk the same streets, you are a valued citizen and a great patriot. Do not ever let anyone say different. We are Americans in the greatest country in the world. We were blessed by Almighty God to be born in this beautiful nation. You are our brother and I thank you for your service.

Nice, very nice..

Looks like Paul is an A hole. I will never buy a Palstar!!!

Thanks for this report. Now I'm worried about getting my R30A repaired as there is no schematic that is willing to provide. I, like you, have been in the repair business for many many years. I do not like, but have, repaired equipment with out a schematic. My case is that it has a lot of audio noise, with no input. So, it must be in the audio or PS. Meter lamp is out. I talked with "them" and said it would be in May before "they" could get to it. Why doesn't he hire good people to help with the back load, or provide decent schematic and alignment checks for these products? I'm done. //... Joe

Thanks, just deleted their link in my bookmarks.

Well done on fixing one of the faults that were missed when it was sent for repair,G1PGI

I don't blame you, Paul is a guy who needs to stay away from customers cause his attitude gives the company a very bad name. The parts they use to manufacture their products is best in the industry however, Paul drives people away for sure...

Anne Kidd go to 37.00 and listen. This is my favorite song. Yes, Jill was singing in the choir and Preston was playing in the orchestral.