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Re: Topband: 50 ohm direct burial coax cable‏

To: "topband" <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: 50 ohm direct burial coax cable‏
From: "Paul Christensen" <w9ac@arrl.net>
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:33:13 -0400
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
"A quarter wavelength 75 ohm coax working into a 50 ohm load, transforms the 50 ohm load to 112.5 ohms, non-reactive, as it appears at the end of the coax next to the transmitter, as previously discussed.

Good so far.

"If we place a 50-ohm SWR meter at the near end of the coax, between it and the rf source (the transmitter), the meter will "see" 112.5 ohms, not 50 ohms nor 75 ohms. It will read 2.25:1 SWR. But the actual SWR on the coax line remains 1.5:1."

In your example, SWR at any point on a lossless 1/4 wave, 70-ohm line section is indeed 1.5:1. The Z at the input to the 1/4 section is 112.5+j0. However, the SWR at any distance from *this point* to the transmitter is not just "apparently" 2.25:1. It is in fact 2.25:1. The 1/4 wave section not only transformed the Z, but the Z transformation set up a change in SWR on any subsequent length of 50-ohm line between the transformer and transmitter. The SWR at any point on the 50 ohm section [SWR (50)] between the transmitter and 1/4 wave section is 2.25:1 (although the Z is now changing along the line) -- and the SWR at any point on the 70-ohm transformer section [SWR(70)] is 1.5:1.

The moment the characteristic Z changes along a line, the line SWR also changes. When we hear that "SWR doesn't change along a line," that is true when the characteristic Z is uniform along the entire length of the line and the line is loss-less.

Paul, W9AC



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