[TowerTalk] Radio Shack remote-reading wattmeter

[Patrick Croft]

Rolfe,

Have you tried the meter with the 500 feet of cable attached yet?  I'm
curious of the units ability to drive that much line, as usually this type
of situation would require line amps.  One would need to retain the 10%
accuracy of this R/S unit to be meaningful.  

These units were reviewed in QST a few months ago, and the R/S displays at
the hamfests I've attended in the past year has had these on display.
Checking with the local R/S district revels about 100 units in the area.  If
someone wishes this unit and the local doesn't have stock, just ask them to
transfer one from another district or Ft Worth.

Let me know your success story on remoting 500 feet!

Bests

Patrick

At 04:25 PM 8/4/97 -0400, you wrote:
>I was unaware of this product until Jim Miller of Comtek Systems brought
>it to my attention recently. It turns out that Radio Shack is closing
>them out so if you are interested you may want to call your local store
>and see if they still have one in stock. The catalog number is 21-527
>and the price is around $50.00 I think.
>
>This is a digital wattmeter with remote pickup head. The connecting
>cable is three-conductor, about number 24 wire.
>
>The reasons I'm bringing it to the list's attention are twofold. First,
>I think Radio Shack did a bad job of advertising this unit -- I'd never
>heard of it until I went into the local store and asked about it.
>Second, if you are using a phased vertical array with Comtek's hybrid
>coupler to accomplish the proper phase relationships, you know that you
>need to monitor the power being dumped into the dummy load. So, you have
>a choice of running lots of coax from the coupler unit back to the
>shack, putting the dummy load there, and monitoring the power with a
>conventional wattmeter. Or, you can use something like this Radio Shack
>unit.
>
>In my case, the run from the shack is 500 plus feet, and the choice of
>500 feet of RG-213 or 500 feet of cheap telephone wire was an easy one.
>
>The wattmeter has three ranges -- 20 watts, 200 watts, and 2000 watts --
>as well as an autosensing position. With the touch of a button, it will
>also read SWR directly. The control head display consists of backlit
>LCD's about 1/2" high and the head itself is about 4" wide by 1 1/2"
>high. It has a bracket on it that suggests that it was intended to be
>used in mobile applications. There is also a front-panel button to
>switch between peak and average reading. The remote head looks
>well-sealed and relatively weather-proof, but the manual suggests
>sealing with one of the compounds designed for that job if it's going to
>live outdoors fulltime.
>
>So far, the unit works as advertised and seems to fill a missing niche.
>
>As always, YMMV, but to me -- especially at the closeout price -- this
>seems like an excellent value.
>
>Rolfe, W1VC
>
>-- 
>Rolfe Tessem           |       Lucky Duck Productions, Inc.
>rolfe@ldp.com          |       96 Morton Street
>(212) 463-0029         |       New York, NY 10014
>
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