Paul,
I agree. That's why I started out by saying it was a wacky idea.

Things like this make you think though. Sometimes those types of musings pay
off later down the road. One of my mentors once said: "A good engineer
remembers every good idea he ever heard. The only thing he forgets is who he
heard it from".

Joe
W3JDR


"Paul Burridge" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:38:00 GMT, "Joe Rocci" wrote:

Paul & Steve,

Steve,
I'm pretty confident that the phase shift will be constant and can be
calibrated out. If not, it can be made irrelevant by using two splitters,
one for the forward path sample and one for the return path sample.

Paul,
The idea is to use the splitter 'backwards"; drive the RF into one of the
splitter legs and feed the load through the common port. Assuming good
directivity, any RF coming out of the other splitter leg must be
reflected
energy. If you put a sample of the forward energy into a scope's X input
(horizontal) and a sample of the reflected energy into the Y input
(vertical), you will get an elliptical display called a Lissajous
pattern.
If X and Y are equal in magnitude and exactly 90 deg out of phase, this
will be a perfect circle. Any other phase angle will result in a
elliptical
pattern whose inclination angle relative to the X axis (or Y axis) is a
function of the phase angle. The length of the ellipse is a function of
the
magnitude. This is classic stuff...look it up if you're not familiar with

THanks for the explanation, but I doubt this idea has enough accuracy
for determining the parameters within any acceptable degree. Neat
concept, though!
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.