[Amps] Bird Element Calibration?

[R.Measures]

On Mar 26, 2005, at 12:13 AM, G3rzp at aol.com wrote:

> I don't think there's a lot of disagreement between G8WRB and myself. 
> We
> seem both to be very dubious about the accuracy of using an 
> oscilloscope, and
> recognise the problems with calorimeters. Incidentally, at Marconi's 
> the power
> was measured with a water cooled resistor: it was about a 50 watt 
> resistor in
> air, and if you got a bubble in the water, at 30kW, it died 'just like
> that!'. I  suspect you really need a constant head apparatus, which at 
> gallons per
> minute  is possibly but not necessarily wasteful, and messy.
>
> And for amateur purposes, for 99% of the time a Bird 43 is good enough
> anyway!

The other 1% of the time is when  the FCC comes a knockin' and they 
bring their own digital PEP wattmeter.  In actual practice, I know of 
two cases where the FCC measured well over 1500w-pep and did not cite 
the amateur because they found that the station was not a source of 
RFI.
-  One of the curiosities of this discussion is that no Bird 43 
disciple seems to have knowledge of the calibration procedure with 
which Bird calibrates wattmeters at the factory.
>
> 73
>
> Peter G3RZP
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>

Richard L. Measures, AG6K, 805.386.3734.  www.somis.org