John, thanks for describing your detailed and recent interesting
experience and your thoughts on the subject.

However, once again the question is raised - how does one calibrate a
Q meter? Rhetorically, is calibration traceable to National or
International Standards?

So much depends on the Q quality of the meter itself. Meter
manufacturers are unable to state degrees of accuracy at various
frequencies and actual values of Q. Nobody knows what the actual
value actually is! Least of all the user!

Fortunately, the exact value of Q of a coil is never required. It is
used only to provide coarse estimates of other quantities. And there
are usually other means of finding the other quantities. They can be
estimated by calculating from values which CAN be measured or
estimated.

So Q meters provide support and back up for experimenters who have
other means of finding the answers they are looking for. By itself a
measured value of Q is inaccurate and of no use. What matters is what
can be derived or guessed from it.

It is merely an intermediate variable in a chain of deductions or
calculations. Above Q equal to a few hundreds it is anybody's guess.

In some ways it is similar to an SWR measurement on a line which isn't
there.
----
Reg.