I have a local friend with access to much better test equipment than I have access to. I'm trying to see if he will tweak it the rest of the way for me. I got it in the ballpark so maybe he can finish it up.
> 1 - When measuring return loss (match), the RL value will be at least
> twice as much as the loss value of the pad.?
That's correct in theory, but a problem one would likely run into in the real world is that most run-of-the-mill pads aren't exactly 50 ohms.? The result of putting the pad in line is that your S11 may look better or may look worse, or may shift it in frequency due to the cascaded mismatches.? It's a crap shoot unless you characterize the pad separately and "do the math", or include the pad in the calibration which is generally a bad idea because it only degrades the accuracy in the same way as would adding adapters or using ratty test cables.
No pads should ever be needed or used with a VNA when measuring passive devices.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? --- Jeff WN3A
