On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 20:29:17 GMT, "Frank's"
wrote:

They will simply represent the potentials distributed throughout an
imaginary land mine field. Tap dance with care or you may have to
sign off as Stumpy.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Dan, The only way you will get a valid measurement is with your
1:1 transformer, coax, and your vector voltmeter. I guess if you
are having problems with the vector voltmeter you can do the
same, with less accuracy, using a dual channel scope, and
directional coupler.

73,

Frank

Hi Frank,

Thanx for filling in one of the gaps, what I called the mystery box.
I'd forgotten Dan had been posting about his use of a vector
voltmeter.

Dan, this is one of your habitual problems of describing the problem
at hand. You are making presumptions that all your correspondence
before you has been held in suspension to consider every posting you
make ever after. Always fully describe what you are doing, and why
you are doing it.

However, the matter of making the measurement is still problematic.
Scope probes have spring-like clips used to secure them to the point
or wire they are measuring. These are properly called "hoods" and in
most cases are removed if you are going to probe a circuit board
trace. That probe end is coaxially surrounded by a ground ring, and
scope probes often came with an accessory kit that would have a
special adapter that fit on this and extended a barb like a bayonet.
This barb was an extension of that ground ring to find the ground
point for the circuit board measurement (it presumed a ground trace
was within a quarter inch or so of the measurement point).

Barring this fine touch, that same accessory kit would come with two
alligator leaded wires with snap attachments that would fit around the
probe/cable attachment to exposed ground of the coaxial cable.
Depending upon how high the frequency, or how fast the rise time of
the measurement, you could use the longer, or would be forced to use
the shorter lead. If you were out for accuracy, you used the barb
already mentioned.

This, of course, reveals the necessity of both grounding for
reference, AND making it a short path so as to not make your probe
part of the circuit. It hardly matters if you use a 10:1 or 100:1
probe, because if you don't use these short leads or the barb, your 2
meter antenna has probably just doubled its length in a very
unpredictable manner.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC