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Reviews Categories | SWR & Wattmeters & Dummy Loads | Drake W-4 Wattmeter Help


Reviews Summary for Drake W-4 Wattmeter
Drake W-4 Wattmeter Reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0/5 MSRP: $(missing—add MSRP)
Description: HF wattmeter from the 70's with forward and reverse watts in two ranges - 0-200 and 0-2000 watts.
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AI4WM Rating: 5/5 Oct 4, 2008 16:24 Send this review to a friend
Nice handy meter  Time owned: more than 12 months
Had mine for about 2 years and have never had a problem with it. I like it because it has a nice 200 watt scale which better suits my needs than all the modern ones with a 300 watt scale. This meter will measure 200 or 2000 watts forward or reverse and the sensor can be remotely located from the meter which could be handy. Since this is not a dual pointer meter the meter must be switched and the nomograph used to determine SWR or the SWR must be calculated. To make it easy I just set it on reflected power and match for zero reflected while checking Plate current or power out on my rig.

The 200 watt scale on this meter makes it more accurate (for most 100 W rigs ) than the MFJ and other Japanese/Chinese meters with cheaper movements and 300 W scales just in the physics of the meter, the higher on the scale the more accurate the reading.

 
N2QQF Rating: 5/5 Dec 30, 2007 22:38 Send this review to a friend
Good Meter  Time owned: 6 to 12 months
Great little meter, I am very pleased with mine works well and is pretty accurate.

If you can find one grab it becasue it is pretty accurate and small in size and looks pretty danr good.
 
K4EQQ Rating: 5/5 Oct 25, 2004 11:33 Send this review to a friend
An Old Workhorse  Time owned: more than 12 months
I've had the W-4 for about 30 years now and it performed flawlessly over the years. I've used the W-4 with the SB-200 linear without any issue.

The only drawback - there is no direct readout of SWR. Drake provided a nomograph to compute the SWR from forward and reflected power.

The way I used the W-4 with my antenna tuner was to simply tune for "0" reflected power. It always worked just fine.

The W-4 has a 4' cable to the sensor box which contains 2 SO-239's for input and output.

The case of the meter is solid steel and like all Drake equipment is a quality product.

The W-4's VHF brother is the WV-4 wattmeter which I've used on 2 meters for the same length of time without issue. The only difference is the power scales are 0-20 and 0-200 watts.

Both Drake wattmeters are quality products that will serve you for many years.
 


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