You'll get different strength readings at different distances from the
antenna, and in the near and far fields. But they'll all stay in
proportion as you tune your linear, so it doesn't matter where you put
your meter. The only exception is that you need to put the meter far
enough away from the linear that it won't be responding to radiation
leakage from the linear itself, which could be coming from the tank
components or parts of the circuit ahead of it. You could check this by
seeing what your field strength meter indicates when the linear is
feeding a good dummy load. If it's a significant part of your reading
when driving an antenna, you need to move the meter.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Henry Kolesnik wrote:
I had a couple of reasons for asking. One was to find out more which I
have. I use a field strength meter in the shack which is in the near fied as
a tuning aid for tuning my linear and wonder if I would see any difference
it I placed it in the far field and remoted the reading to the shack?
tnx