Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is a persistent perception among a small part of the amateur community that you need to build, buy or use antennas with a perfect 1:1 SWR to get the best results. Sometimes a contest erupts with who can get the lowest SWR. Without getting technical, since that could take hours and you have better things to do. A 50 Ohm dummy load has a perfect SWR of 1:1 and you should already know that a proper dummy load doesn't radiate, so while it has a perfect SWR it's not a perfect antenna. If your SWR meter reads 1.5:1, you're losing 3% of your signal, at 2:1 it's 11%, so just because the SWR is 2, doesn't mean you've got a dud antenna. Now I should point out that this can be a particularly dense topic if you get into the finer detail and if you do a search for "Understanding SWR by Example", you'll come across a delightful and very detailed document written by Darrin K5DVW and published in QST magazine that goes into pictures, graphs and explanations and also discusses ladder lin