[Elecraft] K3 - SWR Indication

[Geoffrey Downs]

Thank you Don (W3FPR), Jack (K8ZOA) and Larry (N8LP) for
your interesting comments on this thread last week and for taking the
trouble to set them down so clearly.

My technical expertise in this area is no match for yours although I did
make my first, fairly unsophisticated, indicator of forward and reflected
power in 1967. In those days it was called a "Reflectometer" rather
than an SWR meter - nothing to do with a Reflector of course :-)

Since then I've used quite a few SWR meters of one sort or another and
although a lot of technology has moved on beyond my understanding I've
picked up enough to know that different meters will give different
indications just as Don and Jack say. Some are, I think, better than others
and I must admit that I have a good opinion of the LP100A but in my
experience most of them agree within a reasonable margin of tolerance.
Of course we could argue till the cows come home about what is a
reasonable margin of tolerance and whether one meter or another falls
within it (but let's not!). The reason I originally posted to the reflector
was that the discrepancy I noted at 7.000 MHz of 1.2:1 on the K3 and
2:1 on two other meters was larger than I had come across before,
and arguably outside that reasonable margin so I wanted to know what
was going on. A number of suggestions have been made both on and off
list but I'm still not sure.

It would be interesting to know what indication the newly announced W2 would
give, but we may have to wait a little while to find out.

73 to all

Geoff
G3UCK