straydog wrote:
A bunch of stuff about Art Maxwell...

Art, W4PON



Art, consider it this way, if you have high SWR, you are driving
a load that is the wrong impedance for your transmitter. Suppose
we were talking about an audio amplifier that was designed to drive
an 8 ohm speaker. If we drove a 1 ohm speaker, would you not expect
the audio amplifier to be over loaded? Perhaps a little hot around
the collar? If we drove a 1000 ohm speaker, the amplifier would have
trouble generating enough voltage to get any significant power out to
the load.

Art Maxwell wanted to drive a low VSWR load because he was using
coaxial cable, and as the VSWR increases, the cable sees higher
voltages and currents inside of it than it will see at a 1:1 VSWR.
These higher voltages and currents will cause cable heating, and
a loss of power to the antenna.

If one was using a high impedance ladder line type of transmission line,
it wouldn't much matter what the VSWR was, but not so for coax.

-Chuck Harris