After waiting more than a week, my NanoVNA arrived yesterday! It’s a NanoVNAH4 from R&L Electronics. With shipping, it cost me $67.80.
I haven’t really had a chance to do anything with it yet, but so far, I’m pretty impressed. It came in a nice box, and included the following accessories:
- USB Type-C data cable
- 2 – 15cm SMA male to male RG316RF cable
- SMA male calibration kit – OPEN, SHORT, LOAD
- SMA female to female connector
- Type-c to Type-c cable
It does not come with SMA – UHF or SMA – BNC adapters. I just happen to have an SMA-UHF adapter, but I wish I’d also purchased an SMA – BNC adapter. If you plan on purchasing this unit, you might want to consider what kind of adapters you’ll need and get them at the same time.
It does not come with a user manual, which is par for the course these days, but it did have a sheet showing how to navigate the menu system, which allowed me to play around with it. This morning, after a bit of googling, I found the github repository and the user guide.
As I say, I haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces, but I did put the LOAD, which is a 50 Ω load, and read a pretty flat 1:1 SWR from 50 kHz – 1.5 GHz.
One of the big complaints about the NanVNA has been the small screen. Not only is the small screen hard to read, the on-screen menu buttons are practically useless for most users who have big fingers. That’s why I paid extra for the larger screen. With reading glasses, I found the 4-in. screen relatively easy to read, and since I have relatively small fingers, I am actually able to navigate the menus using the on-screen buttons.
Next, I’m going to connect it to my 2m/70cm j-pole and see what kind of frequency response it has. After that, I’ll probably check out some bandpass filters.
If you already have a NanoVNA, what have you used it for? What “gotchas” should I be aware of?
Doug KE8HSF says
Dan, I have on as I mentioned in my reply to your last post. They are nice, for the navigation on screen, I suggest if you can get one a stylus for the Nintendo DS (these should still be able to be purchased at Gamestop, Walmart, Amazon, etc…), or make your own using an old ink pen and a round ball head pin that you have glue in place instead of the tip of the old pen.
Dave New, N8SBE says
The standalone NanoVNA does 100 points in a single scan, which can be pretty sparse or dense depending on your start/stop frequencies. Use the companion PC app to run it from your PC, and it will then run more like a ‘real’ VNA, with the ability to set hundreds of points for your scans.
Dan KB6NU says
Good point. I recall seeing that somewhere. 100 points is probably OK for smaller scans, like say the 2m band, but not for 50 kHz – 900 MHz. :)
Sterling N0SSC says
I got mine a few weeks ago, now I’m testing all of the things!
Kaz says
I got one back in October and used it to re-tune some of my home brew band pass filters and the broadcast band filter, and to take a look at home brew traps I was tinkering with for experiments with trap dipoles. I wound up just taking a picture of the nanovna screen with my phone, which while not perfect is easy to zoom for inspection. Very hand device to have on hand. FWIW, I ran the calibration for 0 thru 30Mhz and saved that, as it is my primary interest.
http://w4kaz.com/qth/?p=3221