It does not care whether there is a piece of coax connected to the circuit
or not. Neither does the physical meter. Both find SWR by calculating the
deviation of the load impedance from 50 Ohms.

Tam/WB2TT

---------------------------------------------

Your attitude is quite correct Tam.

But the situation is even worse than that! The so-called SWR meter cannot
even tell you the all-important sign of the deviation - just that a
deviation in some unknown direction exists.

The indicated SWR is meaningless. It is *supposed* (?) by the meter to exist
on a transmission line which does NOT exist. What does anybody ever do with
the imaginary value except argue about it on these walls and over the
air-waves.

The thing has been fooling gullible radio amaters and professionals ever
since it was invented. Sounds very technical and knowledgable though. A
good selling point. But it hardly engenders the amateur's "Self training
and education in the art of communicating by radio". It is positively
harmful.

In what year was it first introduced? I imagine it arrived very soon after
the first expensive 5 watt RF transistor came off the production line.

However, the 0-to-infinity SWR scale can easily be treated as a typing error
by dabbing on some of that white stuff.
----
Reg, G4FGQ