#112 

Hi Alan, I used your approach and it works so long as the measured impedance is close to 50 ohms. However, I tried something a little simpler and compared my results to both two separate calibrated nanoVNAs and my calibrated RigExpert AA55 and my results came out within 5% of these analyzers. The two nanoVNA's were within 2% of each other and the RigExpert was a little further off. My circuit is simply a 1% 220 ohm 1/4 watt carbon resistor connected in series to a function generator and an HF antenna. A 200 MHz digital scope with phase measuring capability set up for 10X probing on channel 1 and 2 was used. No 50 ohm terminations were used or needed because all I was interested in was relative RMS voltage at the top and bottom of the 220 ohm resistor referenced to ground and the phase difference. I plugged the two measured voltages at 7.213MHz and 14.250MHz along with the phase into an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the load impedance, return loss, VSWR, both rectangular and polar coordinates and reflection coefficient. I used the scope's averaging to get the voltage to settle on the sine waves. The results I got were within 2% or better of the nanoVNAs and within 5% of the AA55 RigExpert antenna analyzer. I have not tested large impedances relative to the 220 ohm resistor but I suspect if the impedance is between .1 to 10 times the reference resistor (22 ohms to 2200 ohms) I should be reasonably accurate. I would appreciate your opinion on my setup and any issues you see. I may just have been lucky to get close measurements. I got the idea to try this simpler approach from Kenneth Kuhn's article titled "A Simple Circuit for Measuring Complex Impedance" "www.kennethkuhn.com/electronics/impedance_measurement.pdf" Thanks and I really appreciate you taking your valuable time to teach all of us electronics. Hank Hamner K5HHQ

You have an amazing ability to make one of the most complicated subjects into a very straight forward and most understandable presentation! I wish you had been my lab instructor back in the day! I sit in amazment at your soft and to the point teaching style with a hint of a very understanding attitude. Absolutely fabulous knowledge and teaching style! Kudos to you Sir....! I admire your vids.

Dear Alan, 9y later your lectures still provide a masterclass on RF and EE. It is great to see you juggling with numbers like that. Thank you Sir Regards from yo4ocm

Just finding this today. This is such a handy thing! Just a simple bridge circuit, but never thought to do it to tune a circuit. I'm going to have to build one of these. For weird bands where you don't have an analyzer, or for working with 75 ohm systems, it's a great trick to have up your sleeve.

W2AEW you are beginning to seriously eat into my free time with these great videos. Tonight I was working on a bridge by k6bez for an arduino based antenna analyzer. I just felt like I could count on you to have a related topic. This was perfect. Thanks -kh6sky

Brilliant!

to John Brown - Yes, this is not uncommon - and is one of the things that makes analyzer like the MFJ-259B difficult to use on low-band antennas sometimes. A bandpass filter can often help, but it all depends on the frequencies of the incoming (interfering) signals.

you have a great way of explaining even the most stupid people living - walking or whatever on earth they dó, actually get- it! 😎 I used your video to explain how an CB antenna tuner is working. Trying to figure out a way of making non-technical friends understand things like this is not always a easy task.😂 Purely 👍👍👍 from me, keep it coming 😁

I just stumbled across this video, I probably have already watched it. I understand the methodology etc but nevertheless it was fascinating and very well presented. Well done once again

I'm a software engineer, but started out working on my EE while I was in the Air Force, 21 years in the Comm business...you've given an absolutely fantastic instructional video. Easy to follow along, easy to understand, and outside of the math for some folks, a very easy to understand way to apply theory to real life. I applaud your efforts and hope you do many more instructional videos to help those who don't quite understand.

That's pretty cool! I've never seen a visual antenna tuner, but that makes a lot of sense. Good idea.

For a few scraps of PCB, some connectors, and resistors, this is a brilliant method to "see" the workings of an antenna/transmission-line system. The advantage of the 'scope is it's very high voltage sensitivity-10 mV/div. It will work with a favorite of amateur operators--MFJ259B as a signal source. In spite of its limitations, it's worth a try. And voila, resonance and resistive match in one fell swoop. This is an excellent candidate to sell as a kit. Your level of practicality is amazing and a badly-needed adjunct to the amateur "rags" of today. Words of thanks are barely adequate.

An excellent explanation on how to tune an HF antenna that I ever have seen. Congratulations! Great!

This was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a bunch

You do an outstanding job with your videos! Very clear and easy to understand. I have subscribed and look forward to seeing your future videos as well as going back and viewing your earlier ones. Thanks very much for taking the time to do this. 73, Alan W3AL

Thank you for all the awesome tutorials on transistors. You are the only one that really explains things very well and easy to understand. Keep up the great work!

You used an instrument to tune the antenna. After that you use the number on the dials to design a equivalent circuit to hook before the antenna?

Ham radio operator and currently studying Electrical Engineering. Ham Radio and electronics has always been a hobby. Now a career

So cool! I just learned today that these bridges are the foundation for how the NanoVNA version 01's work - though the oscope is replaced by low sideband mixers and a 3-channel audio ADC.

First of all. Great tutorial and really usefull. In the demonstration the freqency is about 18 MHz, but is it possible to do the same analysis with a higher freqency band, lets say 2.4 GHz? I've imagine that the paracitic effects will have a higher influence with a higher freqency?

What an awesome video, content and generosity in sharing knowledge. This is the essence of amateur radio. Good job! - Patrick KM5L

Very nice demonstration with the visuals of impedance. I really think the use of the scope and tuner gives a great picture of antenna matching. Great teaching skills, my friend!

Thank you for making these videos. They are greatly appreciated :-)

Very nice video !!!! Great. Thanks LU1JCO

A great video, congratulations for the density of information! Very interesting and usefull for every ham. My very 73 and 55! P.S. How about UHF-antenna impedance measurings?

Much more information than a standard SWR meter -- good explanation.

Nice. Very much appreciate this video.

If memory serves me right, the AD8302 would be a perfect candidate to measure the phases of the voltages. Nice video. I use the HP4815a, and the HP4193a, but unfortunately affected by strong RF signals, from signals received on the antenna. I should try your concept, of course using none reactive glow bar resistor, I hope! LOL!. For those interested in more info, about the ad8302, see, Analog Dialogue 35-05 (2001) 73's, Dale.

Great video. One of the best for this subject. This is my meat! You could use this idea not just for antennas but for for visualising filters etc. One could also use the inv and/or add functions on the scope to to aim for a max sine-wave or flat line. XY might also give some interesting results. With persistence, and a good CRO (scope), HP calculator, variable network filter and LTSpice et al and you can immerse yourself at a practical level till you really, really *_know_* this stuff.

Thanks a lot! Very nice, very usefull. I want to measure the impedance of a wire antenna (helical connected only on one end on my PCB), can I use this method? need to change something?

Hah. Surprised Alan didn't just pull out his trusty HP 15C and run the numbers in complex mode. ;)

Excelent!!!

This is awesome, o only know very limited knowledge of electronics from my dad growing up, he was in the military for electronics and worked on radios and the original huge night vision scopes. He was stationed in Taiwan. I built quite a few things growing up like the lie detector and an guitar distortion box I still have today somewhere that I loved the best. I found you here looking how to get to find the exact frequency of antennas or more accurately for what in doing exactly is making copper coils as a necklace pendant that I’ve been working on for 7 years now daily and I’ve always been driven crazy trying to find certain frequencies that do certain things for healing and I’ve see miracles with them but I’m in the dark what frequency I’m making because the wavelength changes when I coil the wire into a custom coil I designed of my own that’s really amazing but I’m goin insane because I do t know what length to make them to compensate for the winding so it’s pretty maddening for me, then I heard someone out here talk about finding the frequency of an antenna with the oscilloscope and I didn’t think it was possible really but I’m seeing in my head it can be. I found a cheap used one near to me to get once I get my tires put on I can go get it. Is there an easy way to see the exact frequency of a copper coil that you know so I can see what in ending up with so I can find a compensation to get what I’m wanting to make in the end after winding it up? I need some sanity lol. I’ve been working bday and night on this for 7 yrs trying to solve this mystery without the tools or skills to see what I’m getting in the end. Just want I help people feel better easily and I’m getting Somwhere good with it finally just recently the hard way but I’d like to refine it to perfection this way. I’m good with doing the electronic work and can solder like a robot since I was 4 or 5. But my technical knowledge of the finer parts of it all is blah 😂. Was never good in school or math. That’s why I can’t believe I’m doing this for 7 yrs mile a mad man. It’s my wanting to help people not suffer that drives me to do what I’m the worst candidate to do it. I care probably way too much and want to find easy and safe ways to stop suffering for us all and not hide it. I’m doing a good job of that already now for 35 years and it all led me to invisible light colors bam dive got down how to make any thread of any color of invisible light for some years now by El wavelength and all I need to finish this off is to find what the coil is after winding it and then I can help people way better. I’ve seen literal miracles with this I created. If I can know exactly a frequency when it done I can cure anything by people just wearing a necklace tuned to cure just about anything. I do it underground to keep my life of you understand. M Any help will be helping not so much just me but mostly others really. I do it all for free as I believe it should be. It’s cost me at least a quarter million over the last 33 years curing people of just about anything you can imagine at my own cost. So now I’m broke but I keep going. I’m a bit crazy as you can tell 😂 m It takes crazy to do stuff like this.

Interesting exercises to follow along and to play with. I am not used to the XY-mode of a scope, but could that help some to read the phase shift more accurate on the scopes that do not have automated measurements? But very good to use these measurements and calculations to exercise the complex number calculations, and the compare with different measurement devices. But as the frequency goes up we have to take more and more care about the used components and the setup in general. Thanks !

Very interesting, I followed the theory and demo OK but my maths is not up to this level, so I need to put some work in! Thank for sharing this.

Instead of building this yourself, could I get an off the shelf bi-directional coupler? Any model you would recommend for HF?

I like this Video. Because I am lazy, I used Freemat (it is free) for calculation. --> Vin=64; R=50; Vx=27.8*exp(i*13/180*pi); --> Zx=R*Vx/(Vin-Vx) Zx = 34.2726 + 14.2773i -->

Hi, firstly, I would like to mentioned that you have lots of very good video with very simple and easy to understand explanations... Keep up the good work!!!! I've made SWR bridge and was feeding it with a AD9850 modules that can output 1Mhz to 30Mhz m just nice for the HF bands... I just follow all the circuit that you did and I was able to tune HF antenna using an antenna tuner. I find the AD9850 voltage is rather low at 20Mhz and above ... Can you suggest a method to amplify the output voltage of the AD9850 ?? Does the 50R/50R voltage divider causes the readings on the oscilloscope to read a low voltage ? Thanks ,,,

What a bummer! Didn't think about the ground reference. I seem to use too much C code and too little actual hardware. Thanks!

whoever disliked this should stick to playing with Lego Brilliant video W2a, i learn so much from watching vids like this

As usual, pretty darn good. Even though I am familiar with most concepts of the electronics you are explaining, the way you present information gives me nice ideas for teaching others. And on top of that I love your little creations with big effect, like your probe holder for instance.

Can you use this technique to measure the input/output impedance on a transistor amplifier or a filter?

Doesn't this also sort of depend on the antenna type as well? I know certain antennas dont show up as 50ohm impedance naturally. Is that what the tuner does basically is match say, a 75ohm antenna to 50 ohms?

I am curious if this method can be adapted to NanoVNA, in other words use port 1 as a signal generator, and port 2 instead of osciloscope. Certainly you can measure an antenna just with port 1 using reflected voltage, still I think a comparison of various methods to measure antenna impedance with NanoVNA would make a very interesting video.

Very complete and professional explanation. Very good. Thank you. Dario IU8BKV

So how does the MFJ "directly" measure complex impedance? Would it have a differential amplifier for for measuring the amplitude, and an electrical phase detector of some sort for measuring the time shift?

Suggestion: use good old-fashioned, crummy carbon composition resistors. They're not too accurate (use a DMM to match them), they're noisy, and they have terrible temp. coefficients. But they're NON-INDUCTIVE. Metal & carbon film resistors aren't.

very good work de su3mb

Excellent. I'm curious, I have two HP VVM's viz 3575A and 8405A. Will the vector voltmeter be far more accurate than an oscilloscope. I used the VVM's a few times to measure resonance but notice there were differences between the scope, spectrum analyzer and vvm. Which is better?

Thank you for your videos. I am trying to setup this process but cannot find an inexpensive 50ohm through terminator. Will a BNC "T" fitting with a 50ohm end cap work the same as the device you have in the video? I am new and just need a little hand holding.

Isn't a dipole about 73 ohms though? I know people tend to use 50ohm coax anyway, but I thought why not use RG6 to a dipole, and then everything is based around 75ohms instead, especially if building your own transmitter from scratch you can just design it for 75 ohm output

I did complex numbers in school but never had to do work with vectors.

Very clever, and very informative! I really like the scope probe jacks! I may have to start putting those in my guitar amps for running the output signal on an O Scope! I am looking for an RF spectrum analyzer right now, and it's about time to replenish my inventory of probles & test leads again too. Bye bye $$$ 73s KI7AQJ

Other then the lack of simplicity why do you not like this method to tune antenna?

This is my kinda ham radio stuff, great video, and thanks for making it, I work on radios of all types, also a General Class operator and a industrial electrician, self taught electronics tech, and I LOVE this aspect of our hobby. There is nothing more satisfying than making your own antenna's and gadgets and gizmos and being able to say when asked, were did you get "XYZ" from..... I made it! Although I am a "maker" I love these type videos, and I hope that it inspires others to experiment in making things for their stations.

Little bit out of date finding this.... I can see a couple ways to make it more complex, but eliminate some of the other hard to control bits. A couple of opamp instrumentation buffers could drive the scope with low Z to eliminate all of the termination and coax impedances, you’d most likely have to layout a PCB to pull that off though. Using some board edge BNC and SMD components to further reduce parasitics, would be worth while I think. Might take advantage of the opamps to invert one of the outputs and shoot for a null rather than trying to match waves. Also a great time to use that old analog scope with its infinite bit technology as 8 bits of vertical resolution is a rather limiting factor for most ‘affordable’ DSOs. I’ve been kicking around ideas to do something like this and you provided me a starting point, or rather, near end point. Thanks for the great presentation.

If you take the digital data from the scope curves, you can find the best match statistically. I do not know if there are digitally controlled tuners, but that matching can be done to arbitrary precision by using all the data in the signal and letting it run for a while. The statistical fluctuations will be local changes in temperature, electric and magnetic fields, internal noise in the power. Then fields from power systems, electromagnetic manmade sources, and natural sources. I am trying to get down to levels where the gravitational field can be measured, and that means identifying and adjusting to all the noise sources mentioned above - in real time, or by recording everything and doing it after the fact. Gravitational detector arrays are growing rapidly, but every instrument needs to be checked carefully for electromagnetic noise of all kinds. Since electrons have mass that "noise" will include seismic and vibrational noise, and movements. However tiny the signals, they will usually be there. Being thorough helps. Recognizing that every "noise" is a signal of something happening somewhere helps. And every signal has a group that is working on it. Nice video. Thank you for explaining carefully and precisely. If you record the data and apply some basic regression you learned in school it will help make sense of what is happening in gravitational engineering these days. Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

really a great teaching video,.. easily understood , even it is not an easy subject. thanks for sharing

This is such a great video. I love your demonstrations they are really helpful and inspiring

Is that a wheatstone bridge? Kind of looks like one. also why are through terminators so expensive! lol

Hlo excellent presentation i really enjoyed this, can i do the same with my Nanovna-f ??? Tyvm 73s

Another great video. Thanks!

Thank you for the great videos. I am wondering on what kind of boards do you make solder your circuits? Can you provide a link to them.

Very nice thanks. I noticed that the antenna port trace (blue) actually "leads" the reference trace. If the blue trace "lagged" the reference would the angle be considered negative?

Very nice video. This idea is very useful to build a auto-tuner. Thanks. PU2CLR, Ricardo.

hi alan loved the vid i just noticed that were the 10x probes clip in to, is hooked up befor the 1k resistors can you hook up the probes after the 1k resistors will this still work sorry im still learning

I just found this video and it's very interesting. 73s de N5DHT

HI...do they have this built into some of the high end Icoms or Kenwood transceivers of the ones...I dont know if they do..I do not have like 5k to 10k to spend on these type receivers..

Complex numbers... j stands for imaginary. 😂

Just a query, the mismatched antenna is at the other end of a coax ... How does measuring the impedance this way affect the reading? Also after the matching network the radio might see it as 50 ohm.. but the true mismatch is again where the coax meets the antenna?

I would love to see more about how to apply complex math and do calculations effectively in actual situations. Some tips/tricks maybe? I've studied theory at uni but it was presented in a very non-practical way, not easily applicable to actual circuit design. Seems to me that 99% approximations and 1% ltspice gives good enough results in less time, Maybe audio isn't considered real circuit design? :) Thank you very much for doing these videos! Highly appreciated! Greetings from Sweden

That was fantastic...Very concise and easy to follow. I make my own high frequency antennas (433, 1.2ghz, 2.4 and 5.8) and I use a DIY SWR meter, but this fills all the holes for the other measurements I was looking for. Very handy technique - thanks for documenting.

I have a CB radio I found at the dump and it powers on, but I have no idea if it transmits properly. How should I go about testing the output frequencies of the radio itself? I have a pretty nice 100 MHz oscilloscope that should be able to read the output from the RF connections. I should see an AM carrier wave but is there any kind of load that I should connect to prevent damage to the transmitter?

Heya, I'm just at the end of my electronic degree (but need more RF prac!). Just a few conceptual questions I was hoping you could answer. Could you have had the lower resistor of the bridge as 100 ohm and straight paralleled it with the coax heading into the oscilloscope? This may be a bit more complicated when it comes to solving for phase? Also with the 1K res,having larger just means a smaller the signal going into the oscilloscope? Thanks

Con este procedimiento no se determina la impedancia de la antena sino la impedancia del cable y la antena. Con diferentes longitudes de cable pueden obtenerse resultados diferentes.

Hey! Nice video! A quick question: Why do you need to measure with 2 channels terminated to 50 Ohms? It would be easier to use one channel over the bridge: If there's a missmatch you will see a (distorted) sinus. You can then tune to 0V on the scope. That would work too, if I'm not mistaken?

Super Alan! Great ball park double check to the Antenna Analyzer. Since some cheaper DSO's now have tracking cursors, would any improvement that may give to the delay measurement (to get phase angle) be significant? Also, if one used construction like your attenuator (symmetrical, compact, SMD, SMC jacks, etc) -do you think that would add any significant improvement, especially at higher Hz? Or is that not worth the effort due to scope error limitations.

WOW; Knock My Socks Off. I am not a Ham guy but, I have built a couple antennas for radio astronomy (Jupiter lightening and Crab Nebula). Great information and presentation. Cheers, Mark * * *

am working for walket talky project. how the signl generator works on panel antenna on site works ? how we can check the signal strength on antenna using signal generator ??

Excellent video once again Alan! Is this essentially a return loss bridge with the detector split into the two scope channels? WOW, You really made me learn something here... I just put my scope across the two detector inputs (top end of the RF xformer...), one channel on each side of my homebrew return loss bridge, and can see visually the peak on one channel and the null on the other... Had to put the spectrum analyzer on zero span to make the measurement. So with the xformer in the circuit, I don't see the same thing as in your video, it looks more like an swr bridge - peak on one side, null on the other.

Great Video. Can I use this in one of my classes? To fully master the Internet you need to master the skills you talk about, particularly the math skills. Thank you for this effort.

Just built it and it works!. It was faster to build it than finding an antenna analyzer on a Sunday night !!!

is there a simple method for checking ceramic filters....the 3 and 5pin types?

I have a question with regards to your signal generator, in your case you configured your signal generator to 18.130Mhz. So if I wanted to fine tune an antenna for an 868Mhz tranceiver, I would need a signal generator that is capable of generating 868Mhz as well as an oscilloscope that can sample up to 1Ghz?

Try switching to X Y on the scope

Once again very informative and well presented tutorial, I have also seen this method used for tuning HF dipole traps. 73 Phil M6MRP

This is a very well done video. KC0ZQB said that

Hi Alan. Great video as usual! What material is the board used to mount your bridge circuit made from? It looks like copper-coated perf board of some sort. It looks nice for shielding purposes while still being easy to drill holes through.

Impressive video! Where did you get the antenna tuner from?

Another excellent video, great to see it done from fundamentals and actually it seems to pretty well vindicate the MFJ as being a useful piece of test equipment, certainly at HF.

Thank you! Brilliant!

Great video.... Probably need to hit the text books now and work out what all the rectangular math is all about!

Hi Alan! I repeated all your steps to tune my own car cb antenna and I got excellent result. Market ready antenna gives attenuation of 15-20 db on my frequency and my own piece of wire with proper matching system gives attenuation of 40-50 db - absolutely unexpected result! Also I used David Knight (G3YNH) Impedance matching algorithm to calculate matching additional reactances. As I am lazy to calculate all complex number on paper I wrote calculation program (only windows sorry) where one can enter YOUR data from scope and got complex impedance and matching circuit with parts values. If you are interested in that program for your subscribers I placed it at drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbulXE0Id_BejA5UEo3ZzVhLTg/view?usp=sharing Thank you very much!

nice video THANKS forgive my ignorance but what is the difference between am Antenna Tuner and an Antenna Analyzer ?

Hi Allen, This is a great experiment. I want to try this on my 40 meter dipole. I am having a hard time finding a 5% 50 ohm resistor. Can you tell me if using two 100 ohm in para will be okay? I did find 47 ohm and 50 ohm cement wire wound. I guess the wire wound are bad for RF please advise. Thanks Dan 73 W3DKY

Hi, can you help... i am making an automatic RF matching tuner using arduino. But i need to read the magnitude and phase detector signals out of the coupler ... but here's the part where i stuck because i don't know what i can use to read/show these signals like any module or screen or if i can show them on my laptop by arduino's serial monitor command using this "Generic AD8302 RF amplitude and phase detector"...I don't know which would work. I am working in the range of 150-220 MHz. Plz help ASAP

If you do not have pass through terminators could you use T connectors with one end terminated with 50 ohms?

Thank you very much. Love the videos!!

This is an extremely interesting video (both parts). Thank you very much. The 50 ohm thru-terminators are interesting. Would it also be possible to use BNC Tee connectors with the input signal running through to a 50 ohm terminator on the female connectors, with the "male" connector into the scope (similar to an end-of-the-run on a coax network)? - wk2w

Do you have a video explaining both polar and rectangular form calculations?