"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...
A very capable engineering colleage of mine mentioned some time ago that
an AEA he had purchased worked very well except for one thing -- the
reference point appeared to be inside the instrument. He said it was as
though there were another length of line (about 5 cm as I recall)
inside. For example, measurement of a short circuit would indicate the
amount of positive reactance you'd expect from such a line. This might
not be too important for general purpose HF use, but would be a problem
with some measurements, especially at high frequencies. It could be
removed by mathematical adjustment of the measurement results, of course.

I mentioned this problem to the AEA folks at Dayton, not long after it
changed hands, and they might have fixed it. Do you see this phenomenon?

I saw a similar thing when I spent a few minutes playing with the very
first model of Autek. I don't see this with my MFJ.

Again, the problem might have been fixed, but it's something to look
for, particularly on an older used unit.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Hi Roy,
I briefly owned the AEA V/U model- probably in 1999. Using my HP precision
termination set, it appeared that the best VHF return loss was indicated
when the analyzer was terminated in around 60 Ohms and for UHF it was 75
Ohms. When I called AEA to inquire, I was told "that's about the accuracy
you should expect for $500". The Autek V/U instrument was in excellent
agreement with an HP 8711B.

Dale W4OP