The MFJ-940 VERSA TUNER II is a useful little antenna tuner for
the HF-bands. However it suffers from a minor design error, which
can be easily rectified.
As other antenna tuners may show the same kind of "weakness", the
modification described here can be used to improve other types.
The connection between the components in the tuner - coax connectors,
switch, coils and variable capacitors are made of rather long
pieces of tinned copper wire.
These wires act as small selfinductances. In normal operation stray
inductances are absorbed by the tuning components, however when the
tuner is switched into "bypass" mode, it affects the 50 ohm match
between antenna and transmitter. This is worst on the highest
frequencies.
You can check an antenna tuner by measuring the VSWR through of the
tuner, when it is terminated by a good 50 ohm load. In my case I could
measure a VSWR on 30MHz of 1.8:1 - not very good for a simple bypass!
The solution is to compensate the series L from the wires with parallel
C's. By doing this in the upper end of the frequency range a broadband
match can be obtained.
This modification improves the return loss at 30 MHz from -12dB to -30dB and at the same time reduces through loss (attenuation) from 0.3dB to only 0.1dB.