I hate that you brought those things up again. But since you did..
Yes there are some manufacturers making similar devices I believe B&W
is one. Don't know if that original company still is or not.
Yes they were nothing more than a dummy load with antenna wires
attached. Gives a relatively flat response over a wide frequency range
and they do radiate some. If I remember right they were at least 10 db
down in efficiency from a normal dipole antenna. Maybe more.

They do work for a simple installation. They provide a pretty flat
load to your transmitter. If you don't care how much power you
actually radiate then "they work".

These things are a good example for those people that say "I installed
my tuner and antenna and didn't worry too much about the ground or
other details." "My installation works just fine."
Well so does the above device "work just fine". But what your
definition of "just fine" is may be way less than par.

Regards
Gary


On 22 Nov 2003 23:08:00 GMT, (BOEING377) wrote:

Does anyone recall the so called solid state antenna tuners (no DC power
needed!) sold in great quantities a few years ago that looked like an
encapsulated Balun (coax to the center, dipole out each end) and sold for
hundreds of dollars? I think some company in Florida called MARCOM or something
like that sold em and I heard even ICOM came out with something similar.
Published SWR v freq chart showed amazing flat 1:1 from 1.5 to 30 MHz,
curiously with no hints of resonance related bumps. I tried my best to convince
my commercial fishing friends not to buy em, to no avail I THINK all they were
is a lossy 50 ohm resistor. That would explain the flat SWR. Does anyone know
more? Are these still sold? Are there any peope who still believe they work? I
guess you could make some DX contacts, QRP works when conditions are good. Any
guess on ERP with 100 watts in? IMHO these so called tuners gave a new
definition to the term DUMMY load.