QuoteIf that makes me an elitist, so be it...
No it does not, that is not what I meant...
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Show posts MenuQuoteIf that makes me an elitist, so be it...
The one I built is the "Deluxe Tenna Dipper" from http://qrpkits.com. At $85 it is much cheaper than an analyzer. It was easy to build and works quite well. You plug it in your antenna wire and turn the frequency dial until the light goes out. The frequency then displayed is your resonant frequency. That's it! If the displayed frequency is higher than you want, you need to lengthen the antenna, if is is lower, you shorten it... Nothing else to it. It goes up to about 30MHz. The Hendricks kits are quite good (I am not associated with them), and work very well. I have built the SOTA tuner, SWR indicator and the DC20B CW transceiver. They all worked just fine. I highly recommend the SOTA tuner for low power operations (max 5W)! I had some safety-orange spray paint left over, and it worked out well. So, before you spend $300 in an antenna analyzer, or risk frying your new radio's finals by trying to tune you wife's clothesline, think about the simple antenna dipper. While not necessary (A $30 SWR meter works fine), it does save the experimenter a lot of time. You can leave the dipper on and look at the LED while at the other end trimming wire. No need to involve your eye-rolling significant other ::) The LED is quite bright. If you want to tune an antenna for best reception without transmitting a signal, it is, with an analyzer, the only way to go. I found out that my CB antenna (Solarcon I-MAX2000) not only works for CB (11m), but also 10m and 15m! 10m I suspected would work, but I had no idea 15m would. Surprisingly, 12m does not.. I love building antennas and this little guy is great! It doesn't mean I won't end-up buying an antenna analyzer (Ten-Tec sells a neat el-cheapo Chinese model with color screen), but right now money is tight, and the "Tenna Dipper" does it's job... |
Quoterefer to people as "civilians".