Accuracy of AIMuhf system – AIM910A vs several recent versions on a ferrite cored inductor

AIMuhf

Yet another release of AIM software is available, 910A at the time of writing. I have downloaded and tested 8 versions this year, most have been wanting. Again, there is very little detail on what has changed and likely impact on historical measurments.

Inductor1

A quick set of measurements was made on my test inductor pictured above.

Screenshot - 09_07_2015 , 07_50_09

 Above is a comparison of a sweep with AIM910A and the previous release, AIM900B (with circles). Quit a difference, which questions how the current measurement compares with other recent versions.

Screenshot - 09_07_2015 , 07_53_01

Above, the 910A measurement and overlaid measurements from 900B, 885A and 882 and 865.

Frustrating validation is that successive measurements have quite a spread.

Screenshot - 09_07_2015 , 08_36_08

Above is a series of sweeps made successively over about 10 minutes. At some frequencies / R / X combinations, there is quite a deal of spread even though averaging is set to 64. There is a clear drift with successive measurements, as if the instrument heats up and produces different results. This does not really explain the version comparisons above which were all done ‘cold' due to the observed drift with successive measurements.