[TowerTalk] New releases of TLDetails, Zplots, and more now available

[Dan Maguire]

The TLDetails transmission line utility program has been modified to include the effects of DC resistance and internal inductance as well as the usual skin effect resistance and external inductance.  Two new plot functions have been added, Zo magnitude and velocity factor.  Several dozen new line types have been added to the built-in library and all specs have been updated to use the most recent data from the various manufacturers' web sites.

Full details including change history and a download link at:

http://www.ac6la.com/tldetails.html

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The Zplots Excel utility now has the ability to calculate and plot various attributes of transmission lines such as characteristic impedance, velocity factor, and loss.  Basically you attach one end of the line in question to your AIM or VNA device, terminate the other end with an open circuit, run a sweep over a frequency range of interest, and save the data file.  Terminate the line with a short circuit, run another sweep, and save the data again.  Then use these two data files as input to the new Zplots feature.

A complete description of Zplots and a download link may be found at:

http://www.ac6la.com/zplots.html

There's a lot of detail on that page.  If you just want to learn about the new feature for calculating transmission line attributes please see:

http://www.ac6la.com/zplots.html#MeasureTL

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Two small workbooks showing various formulas that are used when dealing with transmission lines:

http://www.ac6la.com/tlmath.html

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A workbook to aid in the design of a typical two-element phased array.  Loosely based on the 'Arrayfeed1' app by W7EL:

http://www.ac6la.com/feed2el.html


Dan
AC6LA