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What should the Watts be reading at the end of a 65 foot cable run?


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Posted

50 watts out. Checked the reading at the end of the 65 foot cable run. At about 20 feet it reads 48 watts out before the Bulkhead Lightning arrester. At the end, it's reading about half. at around 25 watts. Is this normal? See the order below for my equipment 

UHF Female SO-239 to UHF Female SO-239 Bulkhead Lightning Arrester (Not Compatible with Helium) arrester-uhf-ff 1 $23.95
Times Microwave LMR-400 Cable build
Length
46 FT

7 answers to this question

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Posted
1 hour ago, WRPG818 said:

50 watts out. Checked the reading at the end of the 65 foot cable run. At about 20 feet it reads 48 watts out before the Bulkhead Lightning arrester. At the end, it's reading about half. at around 25 watts. Is this normal? See the order below for my equipment 

UHF Female SO-239 to UHF Female SO-239 Bulkhead Lightning Arrester (Not Compatible with Helium) arrester-uhf-ff 1 $23.95
Times Microwave LMR-400 Cable build
Length
46 FT

@Lscott is right. I would suggest you hook the wattmeter between every section to see where the loss is. 

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Posted
4 hours ago, WRPG818 said:

OK. Now it's reading higher around 33 watts to 35.  I might have had the power levels to medium on my radio. Someone said I should be getting 50 watts at the Antenna. Thought that was wrong

 

Pumping 50 watts in and getting 33 to 35 watts out at the far end of a 65 foot run of LMR400 is completely reasonable at 450 MHz. The higher the frequency, the greater the attenuation. 
Don’t get this confused with SWR. It’s not the same thing. Measuring SWR at the two endpoints of a lossy cable will result in different measurements of SWR. At the radio end an SWR meter sees the full strength of the forward power but only measures the reflected power after it has been attenuated in both directions, making the antenna appear to have a lower (possibly much lower) SWR than it really is.

At the antenna end of a lossy coax cable an SWR meter measures the actual forward RF delivered to the antenna after losses in the cable.  The SWR meter also measures the actual reflected power from the antenna, yielding a more accurate measurement of SWR.

 

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Posted
1 hour ago, WRPG818 said:

OK. Now it's reading higher around 33 watts to 35.  I might have had the power levels to medium on my radio. Someone said I should be getting 50 watts at the Antenna. Thought that was wrong

 

That’s almost exactly what I expected for a 65 foot run of LMR-400 based on the cable loss factor. That’s a 1.76db loss.

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