A few days ago I saw a video posted by Bob k6uda. In his video video he was trying to test and compare the chameleon hybrid, against a 16:1 Transformer, using an Icom IC 7300. His results were pretty awful to say the least. The problem I have with the video is not really the results, but the quality and effort put into the video. Not to mention comparung the 16:1 Transformer to the 5:1 Hybrid Micro was, well, entirely something else.
I have never seen the SWR sweeps from chameleon (and don’t need to). I know very well what a Broadband matching Transformer does. On the other hand, if I were new to amateur radio, watching that video, I would have no way to know that the effort or results were anything less than genuine.
So my advice to Bob is “do it, or don’t do it, but definitely don’t publish something half-ass”, because it reflects on all of us creating ham radio content on YouTube.
To show Bob what is actually possible from the chameleon hybrid micro, I’ve set it up at 10 metres height, in a sloping configuration. Then I tested the SWR on each band between 160 and 10 meters to simply see what’s putting a little effort into my configuration could achieve. These are my results
It’s important to point out that there are those amateur radio YouTubers who do 90% ham radio and 10% fluff. Then there are those ham radio operators who make YouTube videos which are 90% fluff, and 10% ham radio. What’s important to remember is we should always try to focus on the ham radio, leaving the quadcopters, sexy models, jokes and fluff for other videos.
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