On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 08:04:34 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:


Makes a change from so-called SWR meters.

Ah Reggie!

Hardly, SWR was the second most considered technical hurdle in the
development of RADAR.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

=================================

Ah Rich!, Yet again you deliberately distort my meaning in your
amusing game of 0ne-Upmanship.

For the benefit of lurkers, there's a great difference between meters
which purport to measure SWR at HF, but do no such thing and tell
lies, and probes inserted in waveguides at 3 GHz which tell the truth.

Ah Reggie,

Yet again, you deliberately distort my meaning in your amusing game of
One-Downmanship.

For the benefit of lurkers, there's absolutely no difference between
meters which purport to measure SWR at any frequency. You are simply
fumbling around with one of your conceits, a troll in the lingua
franca of the Internet.

What you now describe was a flicker in time between bombs and crashing
glass that was quickly discarded as an awkward technique when RADAR
went into production. Such troglodyte methods were long gone before
you even wrapped your mitts around a magnetron.

If we pursue this with your absurd reductionist habit of arguing blind
absolutes in place of practical reality (something Lord Kelvinator
would sneer at as a foppish mannerism); then what you describe as
"probes" are measuring nothing about SWR but are doing what any probe
could accomplish: measuring a common unit of voltage, or current (and
only by inference of the actual through rectification and filtering).
The SWR only arrives by a second (or significantly more than two)
reading, and then FURTHER only after various calculations. Even then,
barring calculations (something no one does except squinty-eyed
scientists and trolls), those same METERs employed were marked in SWR.
Imagine, within very few months of RADAR emerging from the lab, SWR
METERs ruled the production line, and the field kit. And to be sure,
did they measure SWR? As much as any instrument and to your
fulminating frustration, to no obvious difference that would be
observed by Maxwell's demon (or Schrodinger's cat) craftily turned to
this mischievously scientific validation.

SWR arrived in its full glory of attention with RADAR. They were born
simultaneously and absolutely no one gave a fig before on this topic.
Further, it taught a generation of engineers the importance of
matching production designs (which had been long inbred into the AC
power production community - simply a rediscovery of a "truth" that
had never been lost). This was probably because the consequence of
SWR is so dramatic in the 100s of KW, when it occurs in the locality
of the workbench in a system as small as the span of your arms. Even
the Old Wives notice it if they, in error, try to microwave a product
wrapped in a crumpled foil such as butter is wrapped. Their startled
reaction evokes an immediate response, just as my post caused your
knee to jerk reflexively beneath your apron.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC