My son purchased a?BITx40 and we thought it would be a good idea to check the SWR of his home made antenna before transmitting too much.
?
The problem we have run into is that his BITx40 only puts out a fraction of a Watt of power (.016 W) unless we are speaking into the microphone.? We are not able to use our?SWR bridge with?the?low power.
?
1. Is this normal for a BITX40?
?
2. Is there a standard way to increase the power to the antenna for these types of measurements?? (We could just set up a speaker next to the microphone to give consistent white noise input to the mic but this does not seem right.)?
?
?
Voltage measurements were taken with a multimeter on the output leads of?a 50 Ohm dummy load.
1.05V without speaking into the microphone (1.05V)^2 / 50 Ohm *.707 = .016?W (RMS power)
18V Loudly speaking into the microphone (18V)^2 / 50 Ohm *.707 = 4.58 W (RMS power)
