The Rig Expert AA-55 was recently reviewed in QST; you can read all about it there. The QST review shows that its drive level is something like +12 or +13 dBm, so I hoped that this would enable it to work on 160m at my QTH. My QTH is located 6 miles from a 50 kW AM BCB station on 1140 kHz, over high conductivity ground . On my 90 foot top loaded vertical, it produces around +10 dBm. There are also a dozen or so other stations 20 dB below this one, including one at 1700 kHz. Previous attempts with various network analyzers, even using a very exotic BCB reject filter, were unsuccessful.
I went ahead and purchased the AA-55 anyway, because it would be very useful for a lot of other stuff. After using it for various measurements on bands other than 160 meters, I would rate its general utility as "perfect", just what I need for HF antennas, and the whole thing is self contained (no laptop to drag around, although you can attach one to download measurements.) So I totally got my money's worth before even trying it on 160 meters. One thing that impressed me was ease of use. Many hobby type analyzers I have used have a terrible user interface. The AA-55 was intuitive. I never read the manual. I just got to work with it. Anyway, after I completed my recent maintenance project on the 160 meter vertical, I simply hooked the AA-55 directly to the vertical at the base. To my amazement, this thing just WORKED! No BCB interference, and I wasn't even protecting it with a filter. "Finally", as they say. I was very pleased to find out that my base resistance was 24 ohms, which is the same as what EZNEC says it should be over perfect ground. So the ground screen gets a clean bill of health. I can highly recommend this product. Rick N6RK _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
