Yesterday I tried to use a borrowed MFJ 259B to tune the omega match for my
160m shunt fed tower. Readings were all over the map, followed no logical
pattern, and would jump dramatically from time to time -- an R of 24 would
suddenly go to >600, for example.
By pure dumb luck I managed to get the match set up almost perfectly -- SWR
1:1 at 1830 -- but I'm intrigued. The nearest AM broadcast station is ~5
miles away and runs only 500 watts on 1550 kHz. It pins the s-meter on my
Mark 5, barely -- 6 dB of attenuator takes the meter off the pin. Could
that possibly be enough power delivered to the antenna analyzer to make it
behave erratically?
73, Pete N4ZR
The revised World Contest
Station Database
is online at www.pvrc.org
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