David replied:

Hi,Being a user of HF I hope I can help. I have a Barrett with the Autotune antenna. I think it all depends on how you plan or think you are going to use it. If you are simply wanting to check the road conditions and call into the 4WD network once a day then you can simply use the wire tap antenna. If you are more likley to be using radphone or wishing to scan a number of channels for either selcalls or voice calls from other people then the auto tunner is the way to go. In the bush and travelling around I use Telstras radphone and also communicate with oithers and scan various channels - I think the auto tunner is the only way to go. I have a few friends that use the wire tap units and most of them now wish they had spent the extra money - for the cost of the radio and setup there is no real point in losing functionality. You may think that you will not use the other features now but someone will tell you about something or another and you may not be able to make use of it in the future.

Nigel replied:

I think David summed it up well, but if you cant stretch the budget then maybe invest in a second hand tapped whip until you can afford the tuner. Ive been told by many people that the old style (non tapered) Codan tuner is prone to die so best to avoid that one if you are looking at second hand tuners.

david replied:

In regards to your followup questions I havent actually heard of anyone busting the Barrett base in the way you describe and Im very happy with mine after having used it for a few years continual use in the outback and over bad corrugations etc. Maybe the busts you hear of are due to poor installation? My antenna was mounted on the bullbar but the lower half was actually below the height of the top of the bull bar on a custom bracket to give it some protection. I was advised this mounting method by the guys at PCA in Sydney who sold us the unit.About Radphone Pricing - youll find ExplorOz Team answered this in detail in an earlier HF question on this forum.

GARY replied:

I HAVE A TAP ANTENNA AND 1 CHANNEL, 8022, 4WD NETWORK AND A FEW RFDS CHANNELS.I FIND THIS SATISFACTORY FOR BUSH TRAVEL. Obviously the more you have then you have more choice but I find I very rarely change the tap. For the most of our travels we just use the 8022 chanel and stick with that for most of the country. The problem with having the auto tuner is it can go wrong and when we tested our old manual one against a friends auto tuner we got better results both sending and receiving