artie wrote:

The Bird is a wonderful, stable design that's simple and well
understood. You can get fancier (from Bird, among others), you can get
more accurate (my old HP), but it's hard to get simpler.

I use a homebrew directional coupler (see QEX for
March 1995) for everyday use, and a brand new,
well preserved (in a closet) Bird 43 as a
reference instrument. At full scale it is specifed
as accurate within +/- 0.5 db, which is plenty
good enough for me.

Bill W0IYH