I came across W5BIG's antenna impedance analyzer in a November, 2006 QST article. I glanced at it and immediately thought "here's another semi-toy analyzer that will not give me professional or accurate results". After reading through the article, I knew that the AIM 4170 analyzer potentially offered much more, so I ordered one. Array Solutions had them in stock and shipped one to me that day and I received it in 1 week. There were no hidden costs and UPS shipping was a mere $13.

W5BIG has put together a surprisingly logical, straightforward and simple hardware front end to perform the measurement tasks. It works and it works really well. The real "heavy lifting" of the data analysis is done by his wonderful software running on your PC. The software presents volumes of antenna, transmission line and network data in a really easy to use format. It is fully customizable, but I have found it so understandable, that no changes seem necessary. This baby will tell you all about your antennas and feed lines, allow you to make changes and re-evaluate so quickly your head will be spin. Your days of checking SWR, pruning and checking SWR again, lengthening and checking SWR again and again are about to end forever. With the AIM 4170 you will know where your antenna is, where it needs to go and how to get it there. You will understand it fully because you will be looking at the Impedance (real and quadrature parts), phase angle, reflection coefficient and SWR all nicely displayed on your PC. You will see this information over the frequency spread that you have specified. You are really going to know what your antennas are about. The instruction/ operations manual is very well done and easy to follow. There is also a nice quick start sheet to get your AIM up and running in just a few minutes. There is a Smith Chart function for those that like them. I use it a lot and realized that a read out of line length in electrical degrees would be very useful to me as I spun the marker around the Smith Chart. I emailed W5BIG and mentioned this idea. To my SHOCK I had a reply from W5BIG just 5 HOURS later with a new piece of software attached. This new software includes the feature I suggested and it works great. NOW THAT IS GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Keep in mind that the AIM4170 is a vector impedance analyzer and your antennas and transmission lines are just one type of impedance network. The AIM can just as easily display measured data about your amplifier's tuned circuits, antenna traps, phase shift networks, crystal lattice filters or anything else that presents a complex impedance between 100 kHz and 170 mHz. I have used it to set up impedance values in phase shift networks where the coils have a 10 inch diameter and the caps weigh 15 pounds. It worked equally as well when I checked some tiny pc board surface mount style caps not much bigger than a grain of rice. It is a very flexible test instrument!

I am a broadcast engineer by trade and spend a good deal of time tuning commercial antenna systems and phasing high power directional antenna arrays. Traditionally, this is done with a General Radio Bridge/ Receiver and a Delta OIB (operating impedance bridge). Talk about difficult and time consuming! In recent years, high dollar analyzers such as the Wiltron or Alligent are getting use in my line of work and they really make things fast and easy. The trouble is the price tag; its no joke, you could purchase a nice 3 bedroom home for the cost of some of these test instruments. Renting them is a pain and also expensive and it makes me nervous to drive around with an analyzer in my Jeep that's worth 10 time as much as the Jeep!

I have found that the AIM 4170 is nearly as capable as these high dollar units. It is, of course, limited to 170 mHz, while the big boys run up into the Ghz, but that's fine for my Ham and professional needs. By using the computational power of my laptop computer, W5BIG has created a tool that can "see" into feed lines and antennas and all other types of complex networks with great accuracy and efficiency and at a reasonable cost. I carry it and use it on a daily basis and I whole heatedly recommend it.