New Toy Day

[pkveazey]

I've always wanted an antenna analyzer but the high prices kept me away. I found a NanoVNA(VectorNetworkAnalyzer) unit on Amazon for about $50 and it can do a lot more than just be an antenna analyzer. It showed up in the mail today. It works but there was no instructions with it. With a great deal of intuitive guessing and some You Tube videos, I got it to do what I want without all the other stuff showing up on the screen. If you want an antenna analyzer and don't mind the hassel of trying to figure out how to operate it, its a bargain. Its about the size of a deck of cards.

[Jackalope]

    I picked one up a few months ago, after a demonstration at our local radio club meeting.  They are a decent toy.  I definitely need to wear my glasses when I use it. It's great for checking rubber duck antennas, and of course the resonant points of wire antennas.

[pkveazey]

Since I just got it yesterday, I'm still in the learning curve. I'm working on doing a second Calibration to save in memory 1 so I can have a more compressed range. That 50 Khz to 900 Mhz thing won't let me read my 160 meter dipole. I want to save a range between 1 Mhz to 30 Mhz. Then I can RECALL whichever scale I need for HF by pulling up memory 0 or memory 1. So far, everything that I checked had a tendency to show up as being resonant on the low end of each band. Using the scale that goes from 50Khz to 900 Mhz, I had a about 20 resonant frequencies on my 160 meter dipole. One of them was right on the CB 27 Mhz range. I wondered why I could hear the CB'ers so well on that monster dipole. I've got two reels of large coax that I'm not certain of the impedance. Once I figure out how to read Impedance, I'll check those out. I hope they turn out to be 52 Ohms because they are all double shielded. I bought 3 reels for a total of $50. One of the reels is definitely 75 Ohms.

[pkveazey]

Hot Dog. I played with the unit again today and did a second calibration and set the Start and stop points from 50 Khz to 450 Mhz. Then saved it in memory location 1. I'll probably do another one and set the start and stop points from 50 Khz to 30 Mhz and save it to memory location 2. That way I can bring up the memory calibration that I need for better flexibility for whatever antenna band I need. Memory location 0 is still set to 50 Khz to 900 Mhz. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have some help figuring out how to read coax IMPEDANCE.