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Old March 19th 08, 12:29 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna
K7ITM K7ITM is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
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Default "Splitter" Losses

On Mar 18, 4:32 pm, "Robert11" wrote:
Hello,

Expect to purchase an A/B switch box to switch the coax lead from a single
receive-only antenna to one of two scanners.

Got to wonder about using a "Splitter" instead.

What is the typical insertion loss for a Splitter ?
(the Scanner freq's go up close to 1 GHz)

I will always be using, and have On, only one of the receivers at a time.
Thus the other spigot will be always be looking at a receiver that is Off.

Will I still have the insertion loss if only one receiver is on (but the
other receiver that is Off would still be connected to the Splitter) ?

Thanks,
Bob


A decent splitter, driven by a source whose impedance is the impedance
the splitter is designed for, delivers half the available power to a
matched load on either side, independent of what's hooked to the other
side. A decent splitter should not have more than a dB or so internal
loss. That said, antennas and receiver inputs are seldom very close
to their nominal impedance, so YMMV. In general, though, don't expect
one receiver being on or off to matter significantly to the other
receiver.

Cheers,
Tom
who recently designed, built and installed a 1-to-8 splitter plus
amplifier here at work for a receiver antenna system. The one here
really is good about isolation among the outputs; shorts or opens on
one output affect any of the others by a couple tenths of a dB max.