Saandy , 4Z5KS wrote:
What we did was one of two things: either tune the system for maximum
current in the line or else used a light bulb in conjunction with a
small light bulb and tuned for maximum brilliance. in neither case was
SWR involved in the mess.

It was around 1949 when I started hanging out at W5OLV's
shack. He had a homebrew 1625 transmitter with a parallel
tank circuit. The plug-in tank coil had a few turns of wire
wrapped around the bottom and that was the transmitter output.
He didn't use a tuner. He had a pickup loop that he slid up
and down the line until he located a current maximum point.
He cut the line at that point and fed it directly from the
transmitter. He added or subtracted turns on the plug-in coil
until he was satisfied. I didn't really understand what he was
doing until I studied the Smith Chart in college almost ten years
later. I now use that same basic technique with my 50 ohm
SGC-500 amplifier.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp