Ten Tec S-meter readings

[rohre]

Chuck and the group;
There never has been standardization of what signal S1 to S9 represents in
terms of microvolts.  Manufacturers were free to develop their own in house
standard practice, or not as they choose.  But once a company picks a method,
usually, they stick with it, unless the staff turnover in designers, or being
taken over by another company changes the way of doing things in design area.

ARRL ran a piece on this in QST within the last five years if you are
interested; but the only standardized way of measuring strength of RF is in
microvolts per meter under rigidly defined conditions, using antennas that are
corrected for their "antenna factor", and done with laboratory grade
receivers.  Even the style of detector must meet certain standards in such RFI
measurement systems, and is not the same detector for all cases.  There are
types of signals that are best measured with one type of detector or another,
and to allow RFI measurements by one party to be correlated with measurements
done some where else on the same device under test.

Cubic must have been fairly consistent with itself through the models in
question, and Ten Tec was consistent in their methods.  Go back to the basic
definitions of S1 to S9 in the ARRL Operating Manual or older handbooks, and
you will find they have changed wording down through the years.  After all, it
is only a hobby!

:-)   73,
Stuart K5KVH 

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