To be or not to be...swr inline

[marcspaz]

1 hour ago, tweiss3 said:

I have to say this brings up another point. When running high power at 200W, who cares about the loss of a meter inline, especially on VHF. It is a very different scenario running barefoot on UHF with an already pretty long feed line.

 

I care about the losses with a meter on a 200w system.  Especially with this 300' feed line running up my tower.  Losing ~52w per dB of loss is a really big deal.  I mean, who cares about only losing ~13w per dB on a 50w system.  Especially when their mobile antenna cable is only 6 feet long.  52w per dB is way worse.

 

See how silly that sounds?  Just my own opinion... either you are going to be picky about losses and say " I want every last drop of power" or you're not.  And dB loss from meter insertion is dB loss, not some arbitrary fixed wattage. 

 

I took a few minutes to measure the insertion loss from my meters.  Its about 0.04dB per meter.  On the 50w side, it totals 0.4w and on the 200w side it totals 1.6w.  I kinda feel like 0.4w isn't a "make it or break it" amount of power loss on a 50w system.

 

[gman1971]

@marcspaz, I believe that any dB loss that you can easily get back are always welcome. While .04 dB might not mean much, still helps with other stuff... you are running the signal through another device, potentially causing IMD or PIM.. who knows. Best is just not to run anything and use quality equipment... 

I've accidentally ran one of my 5550e at full power connected to the wrong antenna, after a few seconds it automatically shut itself off. Same with the Vertex EVX radios. In addition to the radio shutting itself off, the day I soldered the power cable backwards, plugged it, live, into a 5550e reverse polarity.... disconnected it as fast as I could... thinking I fried the radio... nope... the XPR5550e survived reverse polarity from a fully charged car battery just fine!! That is another reason why I don't waste my money on equipment that can catch fire, melt, or blow up, as it usually means something wasn't designed right, or corners were cut to make it "cheaper". 

Anyhow, JMO.

G.

[marcspaz]

1 minute ago, gman1971 said:

That is another reason why I don't waste my money on equipment that can catch fire, melt, or blow up, as it usually means something wasn't designed right, or corners were cut to make it "cheaper".

 

G... most modern radios are pretty good at protection circuits.  However, nothing is bullet proof and everything can potentially catch on fire.  I have been involved in radios professionally and as a hobby for over 40 years.  I lost count of the total number of radios and amps have literally caught on fire due to protective circuits failing when other stuff goes wrong.  And it didn't matter if the equipment cost $50 or $100,000.  Believe me, it can all burn.

[Muzic2Me]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:44 PM, WROA675 said:

Done deal. Thanks for all the input and information...I'm a happy camper and on the air.

73s to all

 

How’s that switching power supply? Pretty quiet?

[gman1971]

2 hours ago, marcspaz said:

 

G... most modern radios are pretty good at protection circuits.  However, nothing is bullet proof and everything can potentially catch on fire.  I have been involved in radios professionally and as a hobby for over 40 years.  I lost count of the total number of radios and amps have literally caught on fire due to protective circuits failing when other stuff goes wrong.  And it didn't matter if the equipment cost $50 or $100,000.  Believe me, it can all burn.

Right, anything can burn, no doubt; but it seems that using LMR/LEO grade equipment reduces the chances of such event vs. the cheap CCR stuff and the super cheap ham grade radios. The fact the 5550e survived reverse polarity speaks a lot... I wouldn't want to test that on any other radio... 

G.