A recent afternoon with hendorog, inspecting his Covid lockdown lab rebuild
and investigations of SVA's and Cal kits............my own 4.5 GHz SMA F603FE Cal kit coming in July from Siglent:
https://siglentna.com/product/sma-type-vna-calibration-kit/We wanted 2 good calibrations to save with my SVA1032X while good and warm, one on Port 1 and another after an N-SMA adaptor from Siglents UKitSSA3X Utility Kit:
https://siglentna.com/product/ukitssa3x-utility-kit/The calibrations done were the normal SOL and each was saved into the file system where they can be selected and reapplied at will.
Cal kits were a SMA Kirby (7 GHz) and 18 GHz rated N type....didn't record the brand.
Shot of the Calibration Save/Load file manager and menus.
A saved calibration is a Correction file and we need select, load and apply it for it to be of any use.
Once turned ON, indication the correction has been applied is flagged on the upper left of the display as COR.
Factory Cal
Correction added
But Corrections need be applied to the right setup and as some example, this is the Kirby SMA correction on just an open N port 1 whereas it's intended to be used with an N-SMA adaptor and shows a massive difference to the previous screenshot.
The same sweep with an open N port instead of with a N-SMA adaptor but in Smith chart mode.
hendorog taught me to work with Log Mag/Return Loss mode rather than a Smith chart until you have a Cal sorted as more detail is available over the full sweep.
As some example of this here is a quite good 50 ohm load hendorog gave me a while back in Log Mag and Smith chart modes.
Log Mag looks awful but some of what we see is system noise and applying some averaging tidys the trace up some.
I also came home with a spare NanoVNA Short and Open from hendorog so curiously swept them as to how they might align to the Kirby Cal in the SVA and as can be seen below their Short is an absolute POS !
Next I had a look at a 51 Ohm 0805 SMD resistor soldered onto a SMD bulkhead fitting that are very useful for component tests.
Log Mag looks pretty ordinary and the Smith chart too.
A few of these are handy to have and just scalpel the dielectric short and solder on components to be tested.