Hi Mike, I have a Kenwood Ts-480 with the voice chip installed.  
It's a great rig and the internal tuner seems to work great as 
well.  I have used the rig for about 1.5 years with no talking 
SWR or watt meter in line.  I want one as well, but in any case, 
I have had no issues with my rig running it to an off center fed 
Windom.  For example when I wanted to work the 60 meter band the 
rig clearly indicated that the SWR was way too high so being the 
experimental, adventurous type or maybe just dumb, I turned the 
power down to 25 watts which for awhile was the limit on 60 
anyway, and held some brief QSO's with seemingly no ill results 
to the rig.  In short, it seems quite forgiving far as I can 
tell.  Good luck with your set up.  You are so fortunate to have 
so much space to put up long wires.  Nothing beats a good antenna 
and location! 73, Jim WA6EKS

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Barnard <[log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date sent: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 16:35:57 -0500
Subject: Re: SWR meters or talking wat meters:

Someone I am sure will tell me on this list.  I just put out the
question so that if anyone knew of an swr meter or talking wat 
meter
they would let me know.
A couple of weekss ago I passed my general test.  My friend who 
kept
after me to get my license has been looking for radios for me  He 
has
found a kenwood ts480 hx for $800.00, and a ldg automatic tuner  
I
think he said that it was the model 2600.  He is a broadcast 
enginer,
and he is going to put in the vgs 1 chip.  He is helping me with 
a
160 and 80 meter die pole antenna fed together so the 160 die 
pole
would be east west, and the 80 meter would be north south.  
According
to his program he has on the computer it should do quite well.
I have an acre of land 100 feet wide and about 400 feet long 
about
1,700 feet above sealevel.
I am quite excited to get on the HF.  bands.
When I got my license, they had a contest in Ny.  where you had 
to
see how many counties you could talk to and after a while I tryed 
and
talked to 4 different ones.  They were at the local club's 
repeater sight.
Everyone has given me good advice on this list, and I hope that
sometime I can talk to some of you on the air.
Thanks for reading
73.
KD2CDU