Richard:

Well, yeah. When I started out, I was thinking the REV LED would extinguish
at match... and while that might happen at very low power levels--I've
abandoned that idea (at least with hyperbrite leds)...

The second error I made was assuming my problem would be getting the LEDS to
glow bright enough, I mean my "other" swr meter uses a 100 ua meter--this
thinking was in slight ERROR! (just a question of how much power I want to
burn--but can always use a switch to cut out "meter" in reg operation.

And, following along that line hyperbrite LEDS were a BAD idea... those
things glow bright enough a 5 ma to read a newspaper by!!! (well, that could
be exaggerating)

Most of these designs work, some better than others--and now I accept the
fact that even a 1:1 match will just be shown as a much reduced light output
on the REV LED--I accept this and just "zen tune" for min light (still
thinking about your reccomendation for max. SMOKE!!! grin)

I am pausing here, it works, I dropped in a BUZ100 as current limiter--20+
amps max 200+v, ultra-low "R" at turn on--hard to drive at this power level
in a linear fashion--but doable, and it was in my junkbox--trying to find a
way to use this fact to my advantage--just let it try to burn that turkey
out!!! It works--but improvements are in my mind.... time for me to think
about all this and what I have learned up to this point--I have a re-newed
appreciation for swr...

I have an old tube layfayette comstat 25A boatanchor I have been going to
put on 10 meters, think I will focus on that now--will give me a 5 watt rf
source and I will drop in a switch to drop B+ so can get a ~QRP level out
the back... I will be building a vfo for it...

I need a tube set (very forgiving of high swr and direct shorts), all my
other equip is solid state and I grow careless with "the movement of the
planet Earth"

(or time grin)...

Warmest regards,
John
--
When Viagra fails to work--you are DOOMED!!!

"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
| On Tue, 10 May 2005 09:43:01 -0700, "John Smith"
| wrote:
|
| Without the FET, the leds would not last long, when I said "bright"--that
| was an understatement...
|
| Hi Brett,
|
| If by bright you mean those dim Orange LEDs you first specified, I am
| inclined to believe that you have not seen "bright" at all (all
| advertising claims aside). The eye is a very, very poor measurement
| instrument of absolutes. All of this goes hand-in-hand with the total
| lack of quantitative information of:
| 1. How much forward power;
| 2. How much reverse power;
| 3. How bright forward LED;
| 4. How bright reverse LED;
| 5. How much current through either LED;
| 6. How much voltage across anything;
| 7. ALL (or any) of the above for any given load.
|
| It is one thing to "want" to build a relative indicator - but relative
| to what? A Zen tune-up?
|
| One LED gets brighter and the other dimmer? By how much? and just
| what is this an indication of? I posed the acid test of describing
| this in end-user documentation and I note its glaring absence.
|
| It stands to reason that the circuit topologies that you offer the
| most are biased to shut down the weaker LED (and the reverse power, by
| nature of cable loss) which is guaranteed to be the weaker power.
|
| Hence, it follows that the forward power is extinguishing the reverse
| indicator. It may make an interesting display, but it is decoupled
| from any purpose of revealing a mismatch.
|
| 73's
| Richard Clark, KB7QHC