Sorry Carl, I have trimmed many a stub in my time, but the coax "matchboxes"
I mentioned were just so much RG8. At the time they were popular, surplus RG8
was free for hauling off at most military bases - and we poor boys made the
most of the opportunity. Some for scrap copper, some like me to make good use
of. You ought to try that poor man's antenna tuner, by the way. It works,
it's usually low loss, and it's cheap. Heavy though. And you need a 64 foot
section if you are going to use it on top band.
Jerry has done his usual excellent job, and the only other thing I can add,
when the Bird Wattmeters came out the original instruction sheet mentioned
that "standing waves" don't stand unless the line is some multiple of a half
wave from the meter to the load. Which I knew from trying to jiggle
frequencies on the much modified ARC5 we used in lab to get things stable
enough to demonstrate the slotted line.
That - and the fact that another source of SWR meter/bridge error is that I
have quite a number of headaches with diodes whose conduction points were't
stable. 0.78 volts today, 0.835 volts yesterday! I guess I'm from the old
school but an experiment whose result is not repeatable is a problem.
73 Pete Allen AC5E
|