Who has better antenna analyzer
- Thread starter mrel
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I trust my bird watt meter
MFJ is junk and Rig Expert is a little pricy considering it only does HF. You can get really good analyzers from China for great prices that cover HF through at least 1300MHz for about the cost of the Rig Expert and they are really accurate and reliable.
I've never used any MFJ analyzers, but I've had a RigExpert AA-600 for about six years now... I love it.
I took a peek at the AA-55 manual on line and see that it has all the same functions as the AA-600. The one exception is that the AA-600 has a better time domain reflectometer for measuring coax length and finding faults. I can take a 100 foot length of coax, put a kink in it at 72 feet and the AA-600 will detect the bump and tell me exactly how far down the coax the fault is located. The AA-55 has a similar function but is not as sophisticated.
The AA-55 has a much nicer display (even better than my AA-600). Plus you can interface the AA-55 with a computer and use their Antscope software. https://rigexpert.com/products/software/antscope2/ I don't believe the MFJ has a computer interface.
But... Don't overlook one of those NanoVNA's. I got on 23cm this summer and needed something to measure in the 1.2 GHz range. The RigExpert 1400 costs an arm and a leg, so I picked up a NanoVNA-F V2 (Good to 3 GHz). It's actually great. Quite impressed with it.. It's not as easy to use as my AA-600, You need to fuss with SMA connectors and do a lot of calibrating whenever you want to measure a new frequency, but it produces similar results.
I took a peek at the AA-55 manual on line and see that it has all the same functions as the AA-600. The one exception is that the AA-600 has a better time domain reflectometer for measuring coax length and finding faults. I can take a 100 foot length of coax, put a kink in it at 72 feet and the AA-600 will detect the bump and tell me exactly how far down the coax the fault is located. The AA-55 has a similar function but is not as sophisticated.
The AA-55 has a much nicer display (even better than my AA-600). Plus you can interface the AA-55 with a computer and use their Antscope software. https://rigexpert.com/products/software/antscope2/ I don't believe the MFJ has a computer interface.
But... Don't overlook one of those NanoVNA's. I got on 23cm this summer and needed something to measure in the 1.2 GHz range. The RigExpert 1400 costs an arm and a leg, so I picked up a NanoVNA-F V2 (Good to 3 GHz). It's actually great. Quite impressed with it.. It's not as easy to use as my AA-600, You need to fuss with SMA connectors and do a lot of calibrating whenever you want to measure a new frequency, but it produces similar results.
NanoVNA. Just get it. If you end up not liking it - for whatever reason - you're only out about $50. Yeah, they're a little intimidating at first, but there are some good tutorials online. I bought one just to cut me some HF antennas - perfect for that application.
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