here is an EBAY NIGHTMARE!!!

[WA6MHZ]

I have a perfect condx Bird 43 wattmeter that is my FINAL WORD when I am testing units. Now, I am an accomplished RF Tech, so I know how to use it. I decided to fill in some holes in power levels with slugs from Ebay, and bid well to score a pair of 50W units that covered the 144 and 450 Mhz bands.

One went for quite a high price, and the 2nd one went pretty cheap. Great, they averaged out at a reasonable price.

I was most excited when they came in, and hooked them up to my dual band radio to test them out.

The 450 slug was completely dead in both directions (no meter movement whatsoever) and the 2 meter slug only worked in one direction. I checked the contacts and then tried different slugs which worked perfectly. Repeating this test several times, the only thing I could conclude is the 2 slugs were bad.

I contacted the seller and he agreed for me to return them. In the meantime, I won another 2M slug on Ebay and when it came in, it worked perfectly.

The seller got the 2 slugs back and maintains they work for him. Now I am banned on his bidders list.

Also, the whole affair cost me around $15 in shipping both ways which I had to eat.

So what would QRZed conclude in this affair? A SLUG should be a SLUG and work in ALL Bird 43 meters!

[KB4QAA]

I must conclude: "The early bird gets the worm, but the slimy seller keeps the slugs".

[K7JEM]

If I give you the Bird, will you slug me?

[VE7DQ]

I've had some wattmeter/slug combinations that weren't at all happy. I assumed that the tolerances all stacked up one way and caused the failure.

[WB2WIK]

I've had slugs appear to go "intermittent," when really nothing at all was wrong with them. The isolated contacts on the sides of the element just didn't make good contact with the spring finger in the coupler. I usually use a pink pencil eraser to clean all that stuff. Since there's less than 30 uA flowing through these contacts, that's not enough to clean them by conduction.

Since I have several Bird couplers and a few meter housings, I can try elements in different couplers to determine if there's really something wrong, or not. Usually, there's nothing wrong except a poor connection. If an element works fine in one coupler but doesn't work in another coupler, it's a contact problem. The coupler's passive so there's nothing in there to fail except the contacts at the element or the connector that attaches the cable to the meter.

I've seen elements go bad from "too much power," and also from mechanical shock (dropping them on a hard surface).

[KC9UDX]

I have one that only worked in one direction when I got it. I noticed the contact on one side stuck out past the body diameter and the other one didn't, so I used a needle nose pliers to pull on the one that didn't. It didn't move, but for whatever reason the slug works fine now.

[KK0DJ]

I'll chime in with WB2WIK... that 'trick' works for many things electronic! The venerable pencil eraser is resposible for many a Cold War era classified messages being decrypted aboard naval vessels with the old KWR37 Crypto drawers. If I'm not mistaken, there are knock-off slugs that appear in every way to be from Bird or other reputable manufacturer which are not at all anywhere near spec or capable of providing the precision of 'real' Bird components such as the slugs. K7JEM gets the humor award for his quip... loved it.

[AF6LJ]

I've had slugs appear to go "intermittent," when really nothing at all was wrong with them. The isolated contacts on the sides of the element just didn't make good contact with the spring finger in the coupler. I usually use a pink pencil eraser to clean all that stuff. Since there's less than 30 uA flowing through these contacts, that's not enough to clean them by conduction.

Since I have several Bird couplers and a few meter housings, I can try elements in different couplers to determine if there's really something wrong, or not. Usually, there's nothing wrong except a poor connection. If an element works fine in one coupler but doesn't work in another coupler, it's a contact problem. The coupler's passive so there's nothing in there to fail except the contacts at the element or the connector that attaches the cable to the meter.

I've seen elements go bad from "too much power," and also from mechanical shock (dropping them on a hard surface).

I have had this happen also some slugs really don't like my element housing that well at first.
A little TLC and all is good....
I have had my model 43 for going on twenty five years now....
It has started developing an intermint in the meter movement.
A gentile tap on the meter sex screw and it works fine.

I suppose it's time for a replacement meter.

[K7JEM]

A gentile tap on the meter sex screw and it works fine.

Freudian slip??

[WB2WIK]

A gentile tap on the meter sex screw and it works fine.

I feel pretty slighted. Mine doesn't even have a sex screw.