Calibration Kits

[silv3rstr3]

It's been a while since I posted.  Hope all is well everyone.  I want to hear thoughts on the calibration of cal kits.  Up to this point I've always sent ours to Keysight annually.  I've been in discussion with management about possibly calibrating them in house.  I've shown them in the manual stating why these need to go to Keysight.  However, there is an Open/Short/Load Air Force procedure in GIDEP.  I think the best we could achieve is 1:1 . Any idea how much more accurate the "master" kits manufacturers are utilizing?     

[CalLabSolutions]

We built some software to calibrate cal kits..
If you are looking to pull the trigger and bring the work in-house, let me know.

Mike -- https://www.callabsolutions.com

[Pez]

The Open/Short/Load Air Force procedure in GIDEP is not how a decent cal lab would calibrate a cal kit.
Considering how manually intensive calibrating a cal kit is, a software solution is funny to me.

All you need is to calibrate a VNA with a TRL cal kit. That is how Keysight does it. The error correction is so superior to SOLT, that you can just measure the short/open/load components and test for compliance. Maury Microwave and Focus Microwaves make TRL cal kits. They're not cheap.

One hurdle of the calibration is determining the nominal values of the open and short. Another hurdle is calculating equivalent return loss of a sliding load. It just takes some research.