Or put a 50 ohm load on the meter and run your transmitter into it if its
good it will show close to 1:1 vswr then remove the load and run the
transmitter into it (short burst only) and it should show infinite.
John


Jim Weir wrote:

dave
shared these priceless pearls of wisdom:

-Hey Jim Thanks!
-
-Maybe I should just build him a generic dipole out of wire or copper
tape. -How do you get the bandwidth wider, use a wider conductor?

That is correct. The "fatter" the conductor the wider the bandwidth. You
can do a pretty fair job with two or three strands of bare copper wire
(stripped
romex) in parallel for each arm of the dipole. The problem is that the
fatter
the wire (or the apparent wire) the shorter will be the elements. I know
that
½" copper tape centers up pretty nice with a length around 20½". If you
use bare copper, you might cut one of them a half inch longer and one of
them half an inch shorter and see what happens.

-
-Also, my only vswr meter is a old radioshack one for use in the 10 meter
- range, can I retrofit it to work in the 120 mhz area?

9 out of 10 of those old CB VSWR meters aren't worth a darn in the
aircraft
band. It is catchascatchcan as to whether yours is going to be "good" or
not. One easy way to tell is to calibrate it with a few known good antenna
installations and see if the CB meter comes even CLOSE to a known good
meter.

Jim


Jim Weir (A&P/IA, CFI, & other good alphabet soup)
VP Eng RST Pres. Cyberchapter EAA Tech. Counselor
http://www.rst-engr.com