Barrett 950 HF Problem

Assuming you have programmed your Barrett 950 to 'Auto Tune' and all your connections are made properly, it has to be a fault in your computer board inside the auto tunning aerial. Have it tested at an HF radio dealerKing Edward River, Mitchell Plateau
VKS-737, ch 2, sel. 2131

If it won't tune at all, could be a internal problem. If it is slow or will only tune on high or low frequencies I would be chasing an earthing problem with either the antenna or the transmitter. I gather you have checked the continuity of the coax?
Where is the antenna mounted? If it is on a bullbar check that there is BARE metal between the bullbar and the chassis when bolting the bullbar on, there should also be a good clean connection between the radio base and bullbar as well as the braided earth strap from the antenna to the body of the vehicle. If yo have the antenna mounted on a rear tyre carrier the same earthing requirements apply as the door or swingout carriers are never earthed sufficiently.
NEVER connect the braided strap or the negative wire from the transmitter to the negative terminal of the battery. If you lose/have a poor connection to the battery the radio and/or antenna will provide the return path for cranking amps, exit one radio or antenna, NOT covered by warranty. Only connect the negative power lead to the body where the battery lead is terminated.

George be very surprised that there is anything wrong with the board, they very rarely play up unless it has already been subjected to high current flows per my last post.
Might be worthwhile powering the transmitter down and reconnecting it, as long as all ground/earth connections are ok and coax checks out ok.
also make sure eath.ground lead is connected to rear of transmitter and a good ground inside the vehicle as they quite often won't tune if the transmitter isn't grounded properly.
Having installed many Barretts and Codan's in lots of different vehicles 99% of problems are ground and cable probs

Voxson,

I know of three new Barretts fitted in the last 12 months that had "autotune failure" problems, but these problems were immediate. The aerials were at fault. Seems alike a bad batch slipped through. Sounds like a trip down to Electric Bug.

Cheers
Phil

Hi Voxson
I had a problem with the Barrett 950, was check by Basrrett Dealer who replaced the antenna cable from the radio to the antenna. Apparently there was a load of antenna cable that was faulty. Also it is critical to have a good earth. Our antenna is attached to the camper and we had to run an extra earth from the antenna tuna to the chassis of the vehicle. It was amazing how much quicker the auto tune worked
Regards Ray VKS 737 Victor 2010wanderin' in retirement. victor 2010

Voxson

I have posted on my experience on a couple of occasions.

I have a 950 unit with auto tune antenna. It was purchased new and installed correctly. From the outset I had problems with the auto-tune failing. After trouble-shooting every possible combination of the unit we changed the antenna for another one, which subsequently fail after about 10 minutes or so. This was consistent with the original unit. The batch number for both of these units was within 100 of each other. Whilst not an expert on HF radios, the fact that they failed consistently after 10 minutes of tuning suggests a possible heat issue.

In the end we swapped it for another antenna, which was nowhere near the batch numbers as the first two, and it has never failed once.

Barrett were alerted to this. To me, it looks like a component problem and many may not even be aware their unit has a problem. The problem only manifested itself after about 10/15 minutes of auto-tuning.

Hope this helps.

Landie

My Barrett 950 / 910 works fine on its whip antenna, but when using the "SupaRod" antenna supplied by ElectricBug in Adelaide it will not AutoTune to 11 meg on VKS737 network ... Must admit the SupaRod Antenna all 9meteres of it really pulls marginal signals from the mud ...

I tried the same antenna on another Barrett 950 / 910 and it works 100 %

Iv'e checked earthing and the like ... maybe I might sunscribe to the "bad batch" theory.

Cheers

Darren

VKS-737 Sierra 4370