Please guys
Without going to war with each other over the answer and leaving me not
knowing who to believe, is an MFJ analyzer a good choice in the under
five hundred dollar range? Would using one of the one watt HTs do for a
signal source or is that still to high.
--
Tom Horne

Tom,

A one watt HT will do fine, but the signal will still be too strong close
in to work with. You need to get the power down to perhaps one milliwatt
or less to plot the antenna pattern in a field or car park. You can make
up an attenuator to reduce the power from the HT. Just making up a patch
lead between the HT and the antenna with a 50 ohm, 1 watt resistor
shorting the core and outer will probably reduce the signal to something
you can work with while still giving the transmitter a load to work into.
(You can make up exactly 50 ohms using two 100 ohm, 1/2 watt resistors).
Or make up a simple single transistor 'bug' transmitter from a handful of
components. Plenty of designs available through Google No need to spend
more than a couple of dollars. The 9v battery is likely to be the most
expensive bit.

Mike G0ULI

Mike's right - but if you don't have an MFJ 259 antenna analyzer yet, this
would be a good excuse to go ahead and get one. Its just great when working
with antennas.
You can get one for about half of your $500 budget.