Waves

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 22:06:00 +0200

Here’s a puzzle. This is a Diamond X510 antenna that should tune perfectly across 144-146 MHz. Here the dip is around 144.800 MHz, and it’s very narrow. SWR at 145.500 is already 1.8, and our TRXes are complaining.

I’ve seen this before, so there’s the answer: it’s been accidentally hooked up with a 75 Ohm cable.

You can spot this quickly by the wavey pattern of SWR - if the cable is terminated with a nice tasty 50 Ohm load, it will oscillate exactly between SWR of 1.0 and 2.0. With an antenna the pattern will be less exact.

Logs on Kosma Moczek

Waves