Well, I should have stated my goal with this "eccentric device."

I wish an indication of SWR which is cheap, uses fewest parts possible, and
has the possibility of "automatic operation" and one can be placed on each
and every antenna I am playing with (or anything else, maybe one on the bird
fountain! grin)...

I bought a box of these LEDS at a surplus dealer, 10,000 LEDS in the main
box, with 10 sub-boxes, each containing 1,000. They are a yellow/orange
color--unique color to most I have seen...

They seem to handle 20 ma for days on end with no problem--they are VERY
bright at 5 ma (at least as bright as a "standard issue LED" at 10-20 ma)...

The info on the box is as such:
SIEMENS COMPONENTS
Made in Malaysia
LOT NO. 72870422
PART NO. Q6270303638
PRODUCT ID. LY 5436-TO
DVP NO. 2605-9491-01
D/C: 9716
PROD NO. 97700420

I have done nothing but use them, have not even taken time to drop a VOM on
'em and measured the voltage drop across one--they are my favorite for
projects (well, I am cheap and have a FEW of 'em!!!)....

My design criteria a
1) CHEAP!
2) Cheap!
3) Few parts...
4) At least marginally workable...

Warmest regards,
John

"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
| On Tue, 3 May 2005 17:18:33 -0700, "John Smith"
| wrote:
|
| Please someone, see if you can view the page he
| http://blake.prohosting.com/mailguy2/JS-swr.jpg
|
| Hi Brett,
|
| A most unusual indicator if ever I've seen one (and I've seen many).
|
| What you have (if you can generate enough voltage - it will take about
| 35-40W of transmit power) is an emergency flasher weakly lighting the
| alternate LEDs at an HF rate.
|
| This is with Red LEDs, as I offered in another posting, if you tried
| with Blue LEDs, you would need more like 170W to weakly light them.
|
| The 100K is literally useless (as are the 1N914s), and the 1K is a
| severe handicap. Once you get past those limitations you will have a
| brighter flasher at no big hit to the overall efficiency - if a
| flasher is what you want. Mad Man Muntz with his dikes would have a
| glorious time trimming back the excess here.
|
| It might sell well to the CB crowd that wants 27 MHz strobing brake
| lights. Could even perform better for night time DX than some rear
| mounted bumper whips. Perhaps a better use of their linears - as
| legal power won't light this circuit.
|
| 73's
| Richard Clark, KB7QHC

John Smith wrote:
I wish an indication of SWR which is cheap, uses fewest parts possible, and
has the possibility of "automatic operation" and one can be placed on each
and every antenna I am playing with (or anything else, maybe one on the bird
fountain! grin)...

Got just the device for you on page 520 of "The radio amateur's
handbook", 1957 by the ARRL. It's called the "twin-lamp" and
consists of a piece of 300 ohm twinlead and two flashlight bulbs.
I used one in 1957 on my all-band off-center-fed dipole. I ran
40 watts on 11m in those days. :-)

You might want to take a look at another type of design for SWR
meters. There is one that uses a short piece of slotted line
with two parallel conductors that separate the forward and
reflected components without phasor addition/subtraction.
Here's a schematic of the Heathkit HM-11 SWR meter.

http://www.qsl.net/kb7rgg/heath/sche...chema_hm11.gif

Note the low component count. The only tricky part is the slotted
line but that is a mechanical problem, not an electronics problem.
Resistors R1 and R2 attenuate one wave in one direction leaving the
other wave in the other direction to be rectified by d1 and d2.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

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