H. Adam Stevens, NQ5H wrote:
Good Lord Roy, I thought you knew better.

If the match at the load is not perfect, energy is refleced back to the
source, are you with me so far?

I can easily build a source that absorbs all the reflected power: A zero
impedance source in series with a resistor that matches the transmission
line impedance.


Let's see, I put a 100 volt zero impedance source in series with a 50
ohm resistor, connect that to a half wave transmission line terminated
with 150 ohms. The current will be 100/200 = 0.5 amp, the power in the
150 ohm load is 37.5 watts, the power in the 50 ohm source resistor is
12.5 watts. The SWR is 3:1, the forward power is 50 watts, the reverse
power is 12.5 watts. Sure enough, the power in the source resistor
equals the reverse power. Good job. That sure must be the worst case,
all right.

Just to check, I'll change the load resistor to 16.67 ohms. Now the
current is 1.5 amps, the power in the 16.67 ohm load is 37.5 watts, and
the power in the source resistor is 112.5 watts. The SWR is still 3:1,
the forward power is 50 watts just like before, and the reverse power is
12.5 watts just like before. Hm. The reverse power is 12.5 watts, but
the source resistor is now dissipating 112.5 watts. Must be worse than
the worst case.

Well, shoot, maybe the source resistor dissipates all the reverse power
*plus* some more power that comes from somewhere else. So let's try a
200 ohm load. Now the current is 0.4 amp, the power in the 200 ohm load
resistor is 32 watts, and the power in the 50 ohm source resistor is 8
watts. The SWR is 4:1, the forward power is 50 watts, and the reverse
power is 18 watts. Oops, the source resistor is only dissipating 8 watts
but the reverse power is 18 watts. Not only isn't it dissipating all the
reverse power, but it isn't even dissipating that extra power that came
from somewhere else when we connected the 16.67 ohm resistor. Wonder
where the other 10 watts of reverse power went?(*)

So using your simple criterion of a zero impedance source and resistor
equal to the transmission line impedance, and by only changing the load
resistance, we've got cases whe

-- The source resistor dissipation equals the reverse power
-- The source resistor dissipation is greater than the reverse power
-- The source resistor dissipation is less than the reverse power

And none of these will explain the loss figure you gave earlier.

Guess I don't know better after all.

Anyone who's interested can find more interesting cases in "Food for
thought - Forward and Reverse Power.txt" at
http://eznec.com/misc/food_for_thought/. And those who aren't
interested, well, you're welcome to believe what you choose. Just don't
look too closely at the evidence.

(*) Anybody fond of the notion that reverse power "goes" somewhere or
gets dissipated in the source or re-reflected back needs to come to
grips with this problem before building further on the flawed model of
bouncing waves of flowing power.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL