I look at those comments about wattmeter accuracy with a bit of skepticism. Many hams seem to believe whatever their last used wattmeter tells them. Look at the specifications carefully. Take an example of the "much revered" Bird wattmeters, the spec is 5% OF THE FULL SCALE READING - and that is ONLY right after calibration. That specification says that if a BIRD wattmeter has been recently calibrated and handled carefully afterwards, with a 100 watt slug, it can have an error of 5 watts - and that applies to *anywhere* on the scale. A Bird wattmeter picked up at a hamfest can be much further off than that.
The error for the W2 (and several other digital wattmeters) will be a percentage of the actual reading (and not of the full scale reading). There have been several upgrades to the W2 Firmware, and there will be more to come. Check the firmware release notes and you will see that there have been improvements to the sensor calibration. Those negative reports do not mention the firmware level that they were using nor did they make any statements about entering the sensor calibration data, so it may be that their W2s were actually reading low - but that *can* be corrected. 73, Don W3FPR KM4VX wrote: > W2 WATTMETER I was doing some research and considering buying the Elecraft W2 > for use with my 2 K-2s and read the very negative reviews of the W2's > accuracy on E-Ham. I wonder if anyone would care to refute the E-HAM reviews > or offer positive comments about the W2's accuracy. At this point I would > have to choose the AUTEK or OAK HILLS meters over the W2. Considering the > cost of the W2 and Elecraft's attention to quality I would expect a far more > accurate meter than the reviews would indicate. Many thanks. > > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
