[TowerTalk] Portable analyzers

[Jim Brown]

On Sat,7/9/2016 4:52 AM, Bill Cotter wrote:
>
> Attached is a marketing analysis of several handheld analyzers I did 
> for our ham club. It has links to the technical details.

The Tower Talk list does not support attachments.

Hardy,

You said you wanted something to drag to the top of a tower, but with 
this analyzer, you can easily get good data from anywhere on the 
feedline, including the shack.

http://sdr-kits.net/VNWA3_Description.html

I no longer climb anything higher than a stepladder, so I do all my 
measurements from the shack. It needs no power supply, getting its power 
from the USB port that connects it to the computer that processes the 
data. As an engineer, you will really appreciate it.

It does TDR by computing the inverse FFT of a sweep, which can be set 
for any range that you choose for the level of detail you need. There's 
some math built into the control software, and it exports data in 
several formats, including s1p Touchstone files, which can be imported 
by SimSmith and ZPlots, among others.  It's a full vector network 
analyzer, so it also measures S21.

I paid $740 three years ago, shipped to my W6 QTH, with calibration 
loads and a case that I wouldn't order again. With the Pound in free 
fall, my guess is that you could buy it for about $650 today. It's a 
real winner. Well supported by the mfr (some hams in the UK) and the 
designer, DG8SAQ, a university EE prof who also wrote the software.

73, Jim K9YC