Can the Bird read down to 1dBm? Then how do you cal that 50kW CB radio slug?
You don't. You are a True Believer in Bird!
There are a lot of videos of the CB and ham group talking about the old Bird Watt meters being the gold standard. I knew UNI-T has a fan base but it's nothing compared with Bird.
Can the Bird read down to 1dBm? Then how do you cal that 50kW CB radio slug?
You don't. You are a True Believer in Bird!
You wait around till a 50kW radio station disposes of its still functional, but "obsolete" water cooled load, drag it home, spend weeks & kilobucks "plumbing" it, poke your 50kW CB radio into it, get a real value for average power, adjust the meter zero on your Bird, & "call it good"!
No point in checking for lower power than "max" if you are a CBer.
There are a lot of videos of the CB and ham group talking about the old Bird Watt meters being the gold standard. I knew UNI-T has a fan base but it's nothing compared with Bird.
Why? It was this way more than 20 years ago, before I ever heard of Uni-T. Was it some prodigy marketing bub that got this recognition?
I almost bought a bird meter because of the street lip service I heard. Why?
The irony of all of this is when you spend all that cash on a bunch of PA modules, snot to hold them together and a fat load, there isn’t enough money left to buy decent feed line and antennas. So you have to put 50kw down the poop chute to boil off the wet coax and the -60dB antenna gain with the bucket sized loading coil on some MFJ turd which has been retrimmed for 11m. ERP is probably about 10W and all you have to talk to with it is other morons
So, you compare the price of a brand new Bird & element to a used ebay auctioned power meter. Wouldn’t it be fairer to price it against a new Keysight power meter and sensor?
. is learning the real problem here?
Quote. is learning the real problem here?Never underestimate the KISS factor. Analog meters are simple. Then again, I do get a lot of comments from hams about their NanoAntennaAnalyzers. So a few of them are trying to move beyond their Birds....
I’d hate to be inside part of the circuit with a 50kW amp dumping into it
I'll just comment on another aspect of this post (the bolded part) I was thinking about last night -So, you compare the price of a brand new Bird & element to a used ebay auctioned power meter. Wouldn’t it be fairer to price it against a new Keysight power meter and sensor?
You know the basic Model 43 Bird power meter design is from the 1950's don't you?
History of Bird power meter -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Technologies
The Model 43 is pretty much unchanged in 70 years. But technology has moved on. And on. Boy has it moved on.
You want a recommendation to replace, basically, a gray metal box with an analog meter that was invented in the 1950's, with the most modern power meters available to labs/corporations? Of course the new Keysight equipment is going to be very expensive and have capabilities/accuracy light-years beyond a Bird 43. Now you're getting a bit ridiculous. Besides, as has been discussed on this forum, Keysight does not want to sell new test equipment (or even used from their Ebay store) to hobbyists. Besides, what CBer or ham would spend $5k to $10k on a power meter? I can barely get them to buy me breakfast at McDonalds after I spend an hour troubleshooting their radio and fix a broken wire. Let's not allow ourselves such delusions.
Do you realize that the hp 437B power meter line was produced in the 1990s? That's going on 30 years ago. At least I'm using something older so someone using a Bird might consider it (since they seem to prefer older designs). Heck, I can go even older if you want. I can recommend an hp 436A, which has digital readouts and uses the same power sensor. How far back do you want me to go before I reach the Jurassic era of the Bird meter? I'm surprised the Bird 43 fans didn't lobby the producers of Star Trek to have Engineer Scotty use one somewhere on the Enterprise, just to show that they will never be outdated.
As I already stated (and you didn't comment), if you like metal-boxed analog meter movements, the Coaxial Dynamics meters do exactly the same thing as a Bird Model 43. They can use the same elements, have a bigger meter, same accuracy, and cost less. Dinosaur vs. dinosaur. Yea dinosaurs - you remember they went extinct ... (except they think maybe birds are relatives of dinosaurs. Yikes there's that word again - BIRD! But that's some other thread). Paint the Coaxial Dynamics box gray, get a label maker and print "BIRD Thruline Wattmeter" and stick it on top. No one will know the difference because it works exactly the same way and you can buy youself a pet parakeet with the savings.
So no, I'm not going to recommend something just as ancient as a Bird Model 43 design when someone could get a lot better equipment for less money. No, you cannot be a Gorilla while using the hp meters, it takes a little while to learn it. Wait ... is learning the real problem here? There's some old acronym - what was it - oh yea RTFM.
Quote. is learning the real problem here?Never underestimate the KISS factor. Analog meters are simple. Then again, I do get a lot of comments from hams about their NanoAntennaAnalyzers. So a few of them are trying to move beyond their Birds....
Of course I have several and some of the local hams did get them during the "craze" when they first appeared. Haven't been on the ham bands in 6 months but I rarely heard anyone speak of using the nanoVNAs for a long time. They know the thing can give a nice sweep of your antenna SWR, but using the other functions such as testing an attenuator or looking at the Smith chart and understanding what it represented - I never heard any of them do it. I really don't think they understood at a basic level what the nanoVNA really was. Basically they think it's a super-cool antenna analyzer.
One older ham that was a friend of mine was given one to use after months of prodding "Hey you gotta check this out!". However he eventually admitted he didn't understand it and didn't want it any more. Said it was too tiny, which I can understand. Yea it can be used from a PC, but that is not up his alley either.
Dragging a laptop around with you reduces that convenience------yes, I know you can correct for that & measure from inside the "shack", but it is messy, when an MFJ259 lets you do the basic stuff, at the feedpoint in the same way, & is easier to read.
I would have expected the price of secondhand MFJ259s to crash with the advent of nanoVNAs, but that hasn't been the case, so that is definitely an argument in favour of the latter, for those of us without a lot of money to play with.
Smith Charts?--Yeah, interesting enough, but as far as tuning antennas, if the SWR looks OK, & the antenna takes power, most people will call it good.
After all, it is only in, comparatively speaking, recent years that VNAs were cheap enough for general use in industry---we used Scalar Network Analysers. (Anybody remember the R&S Polyskop SWOB?)
It certainly wouldn't be my instrument of choice for testing attenuators, which can be done perfectly satisfactorily with a signal generator, a 50 termination & an Oscilloscope, or HP410C.(Or, of course, with a Polyskop, if you have one in the garage, "monstering" your car for elbow room!)
I would have expected the price of secondhand MFJ259s to crash with the advent of nanoVNAs, but that hasn't been the case, so that is definitely an argument in favour of the latter, for those of us without a lot of money to play with.
Of course I have several and some of the local hams did get them during the "craze" when they first appeared. Haven't been on the ham bands in 6 months but I rarely heard anyone speak of using the nanoVNAs for a long time. They know the thing can give a nice sweep of your antenna SWR, but using the other functions such as testing an attenuator or looking at the Smith chart and understanding what it represented - I never heard any of them do it. I really don't think they understood at a basic level what the nanoVNA really was. Basically they think it's a super-cool antenna analyzer.
I would have expected the price of secondhand MFJ259s to crash with the advent of nanoVNAs, but that hasn't been the case, so that is definitely an argument in favour of the latter, for those of us without a lot of money to play with.
I'll just comment on another aspect of this post (the bolded part) I was thinking about last night -So, you compare the price of a brand new Bird & element to a used ebay auctioned power meter. Wouldn’t it be fairer to price it against a new Keysight power meter and sensor?
You know the basic Model 43 Bird power meter design is from the 1950's don't you?
History of Bird power meter -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Technologies
The Model 43 is pretty much unchanged in 70 years. But technology has moved on. And on. Boy has it moved on.
You want a recommendation to replace, basically, a gray metal box with an analog meter that was invented in the 1950's, with the most modern power meters available to labs/corporations? Of course the new Keysight equipment is going to be very expensive and have capabilities/accuracy light-years beyond a Bird 43. Now you're getting a bit ridiculous. Besides, as has been discussed on this forum, Keysight does not want to sell new test equipment (or even used from their Ebay store) to hobbyists. Besides, what CBer or ham would spend $5k to $10k on a power meter? I can barely get them to buy me breakfast at McDonalds after I spend an hour troubleshooting their radio and fix a broken wire. Let's not allow ourselves such delusions.
Do you realize that the hp 437B power meter line was produced in the 1990s? That's going on 30 years ago. At least I'm using something older so someone using a Bird might consider it (since they seem to prefer older designs). Heck, I can go even older if you want. I can recommend an hp 436A, which has digital readouts and uses the same power sensor. How far back do you want me to go before I reach the Jurassic era of the Bird meter? I'm surprised the Bird 43 fans didn't lobby the producers of Star Trek to have Engineer Scotty use one somewhere on the Enterprise, just to show that they will never be outdated.
As I already stated (and you didn't comment), if you like metal-boxed analog meter movements, the Coaxial Dynamics meters do exactly the same thing as a Bird Model 43. They can use the same elements, have a bigger meter, same accuracy, and cost less. Dinosaur vs. dinosaur. Yea dinosaurs - you remember they went extinct ... (except they think maybe birds are relatives of dinosaurs. Yikes there's that word again - BIRD! But that's some other thread). Paint the Coaxial Dynamics box gray, get a label maker and print "BIRD Thruline Wattmeter" and stick it on top. No one will know the difference because it works exactly the same way and you can buy youself a pet parakeet with the savings.
So no, I'm not going to recommend something just as ancient as a Bird Model 43 design when someone could get a lot better equipment for less money. No, you cannot be a Gorilla while using the hp meters, it takes a little while to learn it. Wait ... is learning the real problem here? There's some old acronym - what was it - oh yea RTFM.
...
I find most of everything else you posted personally insulting. After reading your other distraction about your ham acquaintance not offering to buy you breakfast, I can understand why.
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I never considered Bird. The unit and elements are too expensive. I don't trust their 5% specifications, either. Perhaps it was 5% at factory but by the time it gets on my bench and used for few years, I doubt it can retain their 5% spec. Besides, I really don't care to be 5% accurate at 100 watts level. 10% is sufficient for me. I have two cheap Daiwa cross meters and that's enough for me. At this power level, I care more about relative level (ie. peaking or dipping)
I understand most of the hams here get into the hobby to talk to other people, most of the time about subjects having nothing to do with electronics. They are carpenters, insurance salesmen, cops, etc. I get it, it's a hobby to have fun with. I just have to keep in mind the hobby isn't like it used to be when I grew up. Most of them are just appliance operators and really don't know electronics to any substantial degree. You learn the answers to the test questions and poof - you pass the test and are a ham.