Aubrey Sheldon
Reasonably rugged, nicely compact for field use.
I needed an inexpensive watt meter with reasonable accuracy after receiving several VHF and UHF commercial radios I planned to convert to the US Amateur VHF and UHF frequency bands. This one showed up in my search and I ordered it. It arrived a day earlier than predicted, and I was able to put it to use immediately.
It's an analog meter rather than digital so it won't give you a precise power output in Watts, but it's accurate enough to ensure you don't exceed the overall power rating of a radio or antenna when setting the output during initial setup or after maintenance/repair of a VHF or UHF radio up to 200 watts output. It has 3 ranges, and if the power output of the radio being checked or being used to check the SWR of an antenna/cable is unknown, you should start with the meter set to the highest range and work down so the meter doesn't violently hit full scale when the transmitter is keyed inadvertently damage the meter pointer. I do consider it to be of decent quality, small enough to easily remain inline if you are only monitoring the SWR of one antenna and it's very easy to use. The instructions are on the back of the package and should be saved if you are not familiar with how to use this type of meter. It does NOT require any batteries for operation and the meter is not lighted so night viewing will require some sort of lighting to read the meter. It is of reasonable value for the money and if I need to, I won't hesitate to buy it again. I've paired it with my 100 watt dummy load on the test bench and it's already proven itself very useful. Photos show it in operation at several power levels.
