One of my favorite topics and activities……antenna and network analyzers.

Dennis – very glad to hear things are getting back up to speed at “DM”. After you replaced the batteries did you check the settings?? The replacement may have cause some settings to default. Was the impedance still set to 50 Ohms? Did you have a calibration stored that you were using that disappeared with the battery swap?

I will, on occasion, get some odd or bogus readings only to discover something changed, or I changed something, and the device was not setup correctly for one reason or another.

Did you check the analyzer with a 50-ohm load attached? That’s always a good check of the analyzer or VNA.

Just a couple of initial thoughts.

73 Joel W5ZN

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Dennis Tune
Sent: Saturday, June 1, 2024 12:06 PM
To: ADXA List <[email protected]>
Subject: [ADXA] Lesson of the day

Lesson of the Day...Chapter 27 from lightning fallout...

I finally got the SteppIR back online...Had to drop it and tilt it over and take my 80m Dipole hardware out of the equation because I had a fried Balun connection...Ran the coax feed line directly into the Driver unit and wow it started working...Now I had to re-tune every band (for all 3 directions)...Everything was going great until my Rig Expert AA-230 analyzer battery level started to drop with only 1 band remaining...No big deal right?...New AAA batteries and finish the job...Not So Fast Old Man...started getting crazy SWR readings and noting was consistent...After pulling my hair out for 6 hours and many 4-letter words I finally gave up for the night...Called Mark K5XH and asked his thoughts and he said what I had suspected...Maybe my Rig Expert was not working right...He brought his over and Boom...consistent readings from his and still crazy readings from mine...He patted me on the shoulder and said "That Sucks"...he loaned me his and in an hour, I had the antenna tuned and on the air with my ICOM 7610...

Moral of the story...Don't always trust your what analyzer is telling you...

Now I just need FT4GL on 30, 40 and SSB...

Dennis Tune W5DM