Reg Edwards wrote:
Roy, you are, at least, on the right track.

To measure SWR on the feedline, it is necessary to climb up the mast
or a ladder and insert an SWR meter, of the correcct impedance,
between the antenna and the feedline?

No. You can insert the SWR meter of the correct impedance at the input
end of the feedline. Stay inside, nice and warm. Of course, if your line
has a significant amount of loss, the SWR will vary along the line, so
you'll have to put the meter at the point where you want to know the SWR.

Then you have to come down safely to ground level, switch on the
transmitter, and view the meter reading through an astronomical
telescope, bearing in mind that the field of view with an astronomical
telescope is inverted with respect to normal.

That's surely a novel way of doing it, although unnecessary. On the one
hand, that method might seem more plausible after finishing off a bottle
of wine. On the other, that would be a bad time to be climbing the mast.

In its usual position the SWR meter does not measure SWR on any line.
It merely indicates whether or not the transmitter is correctly loaded
with a resistive 50 ohms. Which is all anyone may wish to know.

After 50 years or more of ignorance, it is about time this hoax was
exposed to the world.

Then, all that is necessary to prevent the instrument from telling
lies, is to leave it where it is and change its name to TLI
(Transmitter Loading Indicator).

Have you had any luck in selling Agilent (HP), Narda, Anritsu, and those
other ignorant companies into not specifying the input impedances of
their precision RF measurement equipment, terminations, and other
components in terms of SWR? Once you get them to see the light, hams
will surely enlist in your jihad. Otherwise, we'll have postings from
hams that go something like this:

"My TLI says my precision termination resistor has an impedance of 1.02
Reggies. But the manufacturer specifies a maximum SWR of 1.05:1. Is it
ok? Reg says there are 6 dB in an S-Unit, so are there 6 SWRs to a Reggie?"

Roy Lewallen, W7EL