Amature antenna swr testing

[darticus]

I have an SWR that says for CB and Ham. Can this be used for all bands? I have 2 meter and 70cm ham radio. Can a CB swr meter be used on my ham antenna or do I need a special meter? The meter is an old Radio Shack Micronta. Thanks Ron

[K9WG]

You should be ok for HF. VHF might work but most likely UHF won't. Just keep your power low as it might be able to take the high power.

[N2ICV]

And check the SWR at the Antenna and at the Radio!

[darticus]

Don't you just hook it up between the radio and antenna? Is there another way to do this? Ron

Originally Posted by N2ICV

And check the SWR at the Antenna and at the Radio!

[rfguygg]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Measure both ends to see how much loss in the coax. Also the length of line can affect antenna swr so this gets you a true swr read of the antenna.

[zz0468]

Originally Posted by darticus

Don't you just hook it up between the radio and antenna? Is there another way to do this? Ron

Typically these are inserted between the radio and the antenna, at the radio end of the coax. It's not necessarily the best place or method to measure, but for ham purposes, it's good enough. Measuring right at the antenna isn't always practical, so it's frequently not done.

As stated, a CB grade SWR meter isn't likely to be useful at VHF. It might provide indications, but they'll be meaningless.