[Elecraft] Noise gen

[Stephen W. Kercel]

Ron:

Your points are well taken.

Clearly a calibrated noise generator is overkill.

The problem with a 160/80m antenna is that one is not always conveniently 
accessible.

If a person did not wish to fork over the $40 or so for the Elecraft noise 
generator, it occurs to me that there is one other possibility. Lots of 
hams (including me) have a noise bridge (such as the MFJ-202), and it might 
be a good noise source for alignment. The load port could be terminated in 
either a short, an open, a 50 ohm fixed load, or practically anything else. 
All that would be necessary is being sure that the tunable impedances in 
the bridge are set such that they are well away from the impedance of the load.

Does this approach present a pitfall that has not yet occurred to me?

73,

Steve
AA4AK




>Ordinary background QRN on 80 or 160 meters works FB too. Just avoid any
>frequency where a signal falls within the bandpass. If the background QRN is
>not loud enough for someone on 80 or 160 (lucky, lucky you having THAT QTH!)
>just turn on the Preamp.
>
>I use a noise source only when I'm in the shop away from an antenna. There's
>absolutely NOTHING about a noise generator in this application that makes
>the alignment any more "perfect". The noise source is just a convenience. At
>times when an antenna is not available it's a convenience well worth having,
>but that's all it is.
>
>Ron AC7AC
>
>
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