Post by pa3bca on Mar 12, 2007 15:21:30 GMT -5
Bob,
I purchased the AIM some weeks ago and I am very impressed with its performance and possibilities. Having a lot of fun AND learning a lot.
I do have a few minor issues/questions however. Two about the “refer to antenna” option and the other about the band scan option.
Also some requests to further enhance the program.
Refer to antenna Q1:
I got a lot of error messages using “Refer to Antenna A” and opening one of my cable data .ccal files. The error is: “The files for small resistor and large resistor data do not use the same scan limits”. After some experimenting I think the problem might lie in a rounding error in the frequency step the program uses the calibrate the cable. I usually enter the start and stop frequency and leave the step at 0, leaving the frequency step up to the program (max nr of steps I suppose). It looks like the program then uses this self-calculated frequency step to scan the cable for both low and high value terminating resistors. Strangely enough this often leads to a different number of steps, resulting in the abovementioned error. It does not do a predetermined number of steps twice, but increments the frequency until the upper limit is reached / exceeded ??.
When I enter a step size myself (for instance 0.1 MHz) the error does not appear.
Refer to antenna Q2:
It is not possible to calibrate the cable and then use different scan limits when measuring with “refer to antenna A” My idea was to calibrate the cable once (form 0.1 to 170) and then with the antenna in place do more detailed scans with different scan limits, say from 1-30 and from 40-60 etc. However every time I select refer to antenna A the scan limits are reset to those used to generate the .ccal file.
I can understand why this would happen if the scan limits were set outside those used to generate the .ccal file, but not when the scan limits are within the .ccal limits. Nothing some simple interpolation can’t fix I would think??
Q3 is about the band scan feature. It looks like the maximum scan with is 6 MHz (did not do extensive test to check the exact number). If I set the limits farther apart the scan stops after 6 MHz and starts again. When using a much larger scanwidth the scan(green bars) disappear altogether and the program seems to hang. Red led on the AIM stays on. I then often have to kill the program via taskmanager in order to regain control of the AIM.
Request 1:
Window resizing. The size of the window is fixed. I would very much like the ability to resize (automatically).
Request 2:
Living in the Netherlands I do not have much affinity with feet and inches… Maybe a configuration setting to select either meters/mm OR feet/inches. I know that some dialog boxes let you choose, but a default setting would be nice.
Overall: Very impressed with the AIM, abovementioned issues are minor and, I would think, easily corrected.
Regards,
Minto PA3BCA
I purchased the AIM some weeks ago and I am very impressed with its performance and possibilities. Having a lot of fun AND learning a lot.
I do have a few minor issues/questions however. Two about the “refer to antenna” option and the other about the band scan option.
Also some requests to further enhance the program.
Refer to antenna Q1:
I got a lot of error messages using “Refer to Antenna A” and opening one of my cable data .ccal files. The error is: “The files for small resistor and large resistor data do not use the same scan limits”. After some experimenting I think the problem might lie in a rounding error in the frequency step the program uses the calibrate the cable. I usually enter the start and stop frequency and leave the step at 0, leaving the frequency step up to the program (max nr of steps I suppose). It looks like the program then uses this self-calculated frequency step to scan the cable for both low and high value terminating resistors. Strangely enough this often leads to a different number of steps, resulting in the abovementioned error. It does not do a predetermined number of steps twice, but increments the frequency until the upper limit is reached / exceeded ??.
When I enter a step size myself (for instance 0.1 MHz) the error does not appear.
Refer to antenna Q2:
It is not possible to calibrate the cable and then use different scan limits when measuring with “refer to antenna A” My idea was to calibrate the cable once (form 0.1 to 170) and then with the antenna in place do more detailed scans with different scan limits, say from 1-30 and from 40-60 etc. However every time I select refer to antenna A the scan limits are reset to those used to generate the .ccal file.
I can understand why this would happen if the scan limits were set outside those used to generate the .ccal file, but not when the scan limits are within the .ccal limits. Nothing some simple interpolation can’t fix I would think??
Q3 is about the band scan feature. It looks like the maximum scan with is 6 MHz (did not do extensive test to check the exact number). If I set the limits farther apart the scan stops after 6 MHz and starts again. When using a much larger scanwidth the scan(green bars) disappear altogether and the program seems to hang. Red led on the AIM stays on. I then often have to kill the program via taskmanager in order to regain control of the AIM.
Request 1:
Window resizing. The size of the window is fixed. I would very much like the ability to resize (automatically).
Request 2:
Living in the Netherlands I do not have much affinity with feet and inches… Maybe a configuration setting to select either meters/mm OR feet/inches. I know that some dialog boxes let you choose, but a default setting would be nice.
Overall: Very impressed with the AIM, abovementioned issues are minor and, I would think, easily corrected.
Regards,
Minto PA3BCA
