I am trying to learn more about antennas and transmission lines and am
currently reading through the transmission line chapter of a recent ARRL
Handbook.

There is a calculated example for a load with a certain SWR connected to a
transmission line with certain losses and the author states:

"Because of losses in a transmission line, the measured SWR at the input of
the line is less than the SWR measured at the load end of the line."



My first reaction was Oh my God, I am soo proud of my decent SWR at the
input of my antenna feedline and in reality I could have a really bad
mismatch between the antenna and the transmission line and wouldn't even
know about it.

And my second thought was what is happening to the energy, since an SWR
gives me an indication of how much power reaches the antenna and how much is
either radiated from the feedline or lost as heat and here I have two
different SWR in the system, one at the antenna and one for the
antenna/feedline system.

I think it can't be that I would loose a whole lot at the antenna (high SWR)
but then wouldn't loose all that much for the system since the overall SWR
is lower.


Where do I go wrong??

Uwe