[Antennas] S Meter

[TonyG70747@aol.com]

Hi Mark and happy new year
I'm retired too and find that I'm too busy doing things I'd rather not do. I 
tell my wife I gave up a good paying job to become a gardener.
I'm a retired EE so I enjoy doing engineering type work. Wrote an antenna 
plotting program with some new twists and you can see it at 
http://hometown.aol.com/azantennas.
Down load the demo program if you like. In the included info I show a diagram 
of the hook up to a Drake receiver probably similar to yours. The hook up is 
quite simple and plugs into your joystick gameport.
Many of the new receivers use coarse digital outputs of the S meter so it's 
difficult to get good accurate and sensitive measurements of signal 
strengths. But if you attach my circuitry to the AGC line, you can then 
properly calibrate the AGC response and use software to give you quite 
accurate dB measurements. If your Icoms have digital S meter outputs with 256 
resolution then it isn't too difficult to make up a program to get good 
calibration. My Kenwood 870s has less than 64 levels of S meter output but 
has the analog S meter out the back for an easy hook up to the computer.
Let me know if you need more info.
73 Tony K6AIA