On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:33:45 -0600, brian whatcott
wrote:

Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:04:12 -0600, brian whatcott
wrote:

If a coax gets a 50 ohm lossy
resistance, then it soaks up all the power with no reflection.

That's where I'm coming from...

And so am I. A long length of lossy cable will show no reflected
power which translates to an SWR of 1:1.


Then we are agreed that a SWR reading can be misleading in this
circumstance.


It depends on your expectations. An SWR meter is not the right tool
for evaluating the condition/quality of coax. For that you need a
stable signal source, a dummy load and a good watt meter like a Bird.
The ratio of power in vs power out translates to the loss in dbs with
a little calculation.