I am a keen hobby experimenter working in electronics and radio and, as a Ham operator, like to be able to make, service and check my own radio equioment.

One simple piece of kit that is often handy when working on receivers is a calibrated switched attenuator. These can be pricey to buy so I decided to make my own.

This one uses a pcb with pre-fitted smd resistor networks to provide a range of switched attenuation levels. You can see from the photo what I opted for. The boards are made with cut-off sections at each end that can then be used to make the SMA in/out connections.

Testing with the amazing Nano VNA showed good VSWR up to around 200MHz and attenuation level settings to better than 0.5dB. So Happy with that.

It is important by the way to use good quality switches, and this is where the main expense comes in. Gold or silver contacts are essential.