SWR meter testing

Sorry for the long winded post.

To me cost doesn't always mean accurate.

I have been reading about how great and accurate these expensive meters (anything over $40 is expensive to me) and I can't see it which was brought up when I was talking to my ham buddy. He was so convinced otherwise. Many of them are the same design and components used throughout the hundred of brands made through the last 50 years.

Last week I handed a number of what I have of SWR/Power meters in my collection over to a friend who works at an RF engineering firm to test them for the bet I have with that ham. I bet this fellow ham the accuracy isn't based on costs while he claims the better meters like Dosy and Astatic are accurate because of the quality in them. We excluded thruline meters like Bird because they are not marketed for CB use.

What is on the line is a Kenwood TS-2000 that he put up and I put up a Flex 1000.

We agreed to use someone who isn't really into the CB/Ham scene to test meters and agree he picks out of my collection.

For years I've bought things I shouldn't, meters are one thing I am not poor on. I have a bunch of meters like Dosys, astatic, palomar and such from the CB world that I have bought at garage, estate sales and swaps - even from craig's list postings. All to me are just barter material for more stuff - example I traded a Dosy meter for Stoner Pro 40 base, the guy was happy to get rid of that "POS" radio which just turned off on him one day - come to find out he popped the fuse in it that was too small for the radio and he didn't think to look at it. His loss, my good gain.

So he picked out a range of meters he thinks would be a good selection. After handing over to the other guy for testing, he called both of us with results the other night.

Out of 15 meters, the most accurate is something I got for a buck at a garage sale, a Johnson CB tester with an SWR meter and the second accurate one is an Olsen I actually bought in 1974. The newest one I got in the collection is a $130 Astatic meter which is the worst one of the bunch. That is followed by a cheap calrad meter and then a couple Dosy meters.

He tested these with an HP test system and some jig that simulated antenna systems for the military. He tested it not just for accuracy of a 1:1 match but throughout the range. He also tested the power meter selection or in the case of multiple meters, the accuracy of the meter reading itself. Because this is informal, I didn't ask a lot of questions and don't care to - just raw results so I can win the bet.

When I went to collect the meters, I brought him a bunch of radios with SWR meters built in, which were more of a joke, never trusted them at all. He returned them last night to me saying not one of them was even close. Those included a few "export" radios and Cobra 2000, galaxy’s and some old 23 channel Midland.

It raised a couple questions, the first is the marketing of these meters must be really good. For some reason I run across people who have four and five in their stash, while you only need one. Is it peer pressure like it was back in the 70's - he got a cobra 142 so I have to also.

The other is what is it worth for a anyone to have a accurate meter that is simple to work?

 

Nope, didn't ask because it doesn't matter to me. It was for a bet, nothing more. I shared the results so others can see what the problems could be with wasting money in many cases.

I don't really rely on any meter that I can't verify accurate, it is something I've come to do after years of this stuff. Bought a bunch of the harbor freight $2 meters to keep in the trucks and not one of the things showed the right voltage, they were off by as much as one volt. I know it isn't the same but standards are standards.

Well to answer your question, yes most can, but I've had one in the past that showed weird reading on an antenna I knew was 1.3:1 for that channel, it showed higher but then on higher rations it would show lower - that one was a realistic $25 silver and black meter they had in 1979.

However I said this before, SWR isn't the end game to antenna.

I have to ask again what is it worth for a anyone to have a accurate meter that is simple to work?

 

I've got one of them plus a couple others, what I find is that for CB work it really doesn't tell me what I need to know so I use my little VNA setup. I had an issue with coax a few years ago and the MFJ didn't show the losses in the cable, it showed there was something amiss but other than that, I had to break out the vna and use the TDR portion of it to find the problem.

One reason I asked about what people are willing to pay, is my buddy wanted to build a couple accurate meters and see if he can market them.

True. I ran across the work of Walt Maxwell (W2DU) who wrote a lot of articles on SWR and even a couple books (I've got one - reflections which was in my pickup and always fell out of it, I think I got a ghost in the book). Anywho, he writes about SWR and what it means to most and what it should really mean - SWR for the right reasons. The books and articles are full of a lot of info so it isn't for people who just want to put up a good rig to use but to go into depth of how to improve their antenna system.

 

Yeah but that's just an SWR meter with an oscillator driving it, nothing more. Had one for a while and traded it for something better for one of my boat anchors.