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Reviews For: Hendricks Tayloe SWR Indicator/Bridge

Category: SWR & Wattmeters & Dummy Loads

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Review Summary For : Hendricks Tayloe SWR Indicator/Bridge
Reviews: 2MSRP: 15.00
Description:
Simple QRP SWR meter with LED indicator
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.qrpkits.com/swrindicator.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0024.5
KE7WAV Rating: 2011-01-08
Fun and useful kit Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This was a very easy build and even when my fat fingers broke the tiny masgnet wire winding the toroid I found Doug had included enough wire to wind it twice. (Thank goodness.)
The instructions are online and it is a very easy build even for a first time kit.
I put the whole thing together very quickly and then installed it into my tuner. I can switch the SWR indicator into the "Operate" position and still use my tuner for my QRO rig.
Doug answered my questions about the kit by email very quickly and the service was very good.
If you want to see my installed kit go to where I have a picture and a brief review.

It has been very easy to use and a great buy!
IZ4KBS Rating: 2010-08-12
Works well Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I'm a CW-only OP an I like travelling light when I go /P. My rig is small and a tuner would double the space taken by my QRP station, so I prefer to use an EFHW antenna and no tuner. Yet, having a simple mean to assess whether the setup is acceptable is highly desirable, and this little kit can be very handy as it can be enclosed in a very small box, much smaller than any tuner. However, the bridge is very sensitive, with the LED indicator that goes very bright even with an SWR of just 1.5 or so, a value which is perfectly OK, especially when /P. Only knowing that your SWR is higher than 1.5 without being able to tell whether it is 2.5 or 5.0 makes this little device rather useless if not used in conjunction with a tuner. After trying to make it less sensitive by increasing the value of the 470 ohm resistor, but with not much success, I finally found the real solution to be one 10v zener diode in series with the LED. Now the LED indicator is off when SWR is below 1.5, dim between 1.5 and 2.5, and bright when above 2.5. This simple mod has made this little accessory really perfect for /P use, where one really does not need to bother about SWR not being an absolute 1.0:1, and it is much better to simply know at a glance whether it is either OK, acceptable or bad.