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307
| | Posted on Friday, November 30, 2001 - 9:19 pm: | 
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Choosing a Station Meter
Are you getting ready to buy a new meter to add on to your station?
Well if so then you may want to read this.
There are many meters that Copper has to offer you and you may want to become knowledgeable with all the features that the meters have built into them.
There are POWER meters , POWER/SWR meters , POWER/SWR/MOD meters POWER/SWR/MOD/ANT meters , DIGITAL meters , SINGLE movement meters , DUAL meters and TRIPLE meters.
Some other features are PEAK reading meters or BACKLIT meters.
The first thing to look at is "what you are interested in looking at" on your station . In most cases it is a good idea to purchase a meter that will do everything you want all in one box.
Power meters only read the RF power out of the radio. There are basically two types of power meter, "RMS" and "PEAK". RMS will read power but it will not read the swing or forward peak power . A peak meter will read that swing that most CB'ers like to see, that's when you whistle into the microphone and you can see what the maximum power is coming out of the radio.
A good idea when purchasing a meter is to get one that reads peak power.
SWR is another good thing to think about because if the SWR (Standing wave ratio) is not set correct, then the power will probably be incorrect as far as trying to read it on your meter.
A modulation meter will read the modulation percentage that your radio doing and this is basically a luxury when purchasing a meter. If the peak reading meter is reading a good swing when you talk into the microphone then the chances are you are modulating near 100 percent.
But in the same sense it is nice to watch.
Digital meters are the best in my opinion because once you key the microphone in one glance you normally have the SWR reading and the POWER reading in one shot. Digital meters usually have a "PEAK HOLD" feature that means when it reads peak power, it will hold it in memory until you reset it or re-transmit again.
This is a great feature to have.
Single, dual and triple meters pretty much explain them selves and means that you can have power modulation and swr all at the same unit instead of having to switch back and forth between the same meter or three different ones.
If you have a beam antenna and a ground plane antenna, the "ANT" switch is for you. This way you do not need to buy another switch box. You can use the meter to do the switching for you.
And last of all "BACKLIT" meters are the greatest because at night time you can see them very well because they have lights in them, however in most cases you have to plug them into an electrical socket to get the power they need.
These things I hope will help answer some of the questions you may have before buying your next meter. |
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