QROP Meter: Introduction

Are you tired of squinting at cross-needle SWR/wattmeters? Do you keep missing the optimal tuning settings when you use an antenna with an SWR of 5 or greater? Are you annoyed by your SWR meter's poor resolution at SWR levels above 3? Do you wish that your MFJ SWR/wattmeter worked at QRP power levels or that your QRP SWR/wattmeter could handle 100W? Are you annoyed when increasing your power increases the SWR reading? Are you causing too much QRM because you need at least 10W to read your SWR meter?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the QROP Meter project for 160m to 10m operation is for you. Why?

1. The wattmeter provides readings for power levels from 200mW to over 100W.
2. The SWR meter is sensitive enough to work at power levels as low as 30mW, yet designed to be robust enough to handle 100W of power. Most of the SWR meters on the market can handle 100W but provide little or no resolution at QRP levels. On the other hand, most of the homebrew SWR meter designs would smoke like chimneys at 100W.
3. Instead of a tiny and complicated cross-needle meter, the QROP Meter provides a 10-LED SWR meter display and a 10-LED wattmeter display.
4. The QROP's SWR meter display offers good resolution at SWR levels above 5. An SWR of 3 is in the middle of the scale. Most other SWR meters have poor resolution at SWR levels above 3 and virtually no resolution at SWR levels above 5. The conventional meters only provide good resolution at low SWR levels (under 2). The irony is that the superior resolution is needed the least at these SWR levels.
5. The QROP's SWR meter is more accurate at low power levels than conventional SWR meters. Conventional SWR meters use rectification diodes to transform the RF forward voltage sample and RF reflected voltage sample into usable DC voltages. At low power levels, diode drop losses reduce accuracy. Because the reflected voltage is less than the forward voltage, the reflected voltage experiences more attenuation, and this causes the SWR meter to understate SWR. If you ever find that transmitting more power increases the SWR meter reading, this is the phenomenon at work. The QROP Meter, on the other hand, uses amplifiers to compensate for the diode drop losses and allow it to show accurate SWR values at QRP power levels.
6. These features allow you to tune up more quickly and safely and allow you to minimize the QRM you create for others. Because you can obtain readings at low power levels, you don't need to transmit 100W or even 10W in order to tune up. Tuning up with 1W instead of 100W reduces the QRM you cause by 20 dB, or more than 3 S-units. At 1W, you also can change the inductance settings of most tuners while transmitting at a low power level without causing damage to your equipment due to the momentary open circuit.
7. NO calibration is required, because there are NO potentiometers to adjust.