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Re: Topband: 1:4 Guanella (current) balun experiences ?

To: "topband@contesting.com" <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: 1:4 Guanella (current) balun experiences ?
From: "Jim Brown" <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:53:30 -0800
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:05:07 +0100, Thomas Herrmann wrote:

>Are there available any good experiences with 1:4 Guanella 
>(current) balun, consisting of 2 separated coax air coils (1:1 
>baluns) on TopBand with high power ?

The higher power rated DX Engineering 1:4 baluns are two 
ferrite core (Fair-Rite #31) wired in series on the 4 side and 
parallel on the 1 side. This sort of design is superior to air 
core, because it provides significantly more common mode 
isolation. The DXE unit I own (and have measured) is rated for 
much more than 1.5kW. It sells for about U$130. You can see 
photos of this choke in the Power Point on Coaxial chokes on my 
website  

http://audiosystemsgroup.com/publish

Common mode choking could be improved even more by adding a 
coaxial choke in series on the low-Z side, using the techniques 
described in

http://audiosystemsgroup.com/RFI-Ham.pdf  

For 160M, it is quite important that #31 Fair-Rite material be 
used for the cores. 

The more important question, however, is antenna and feedline 
balance. Although the line itself might have physically 
balanced construction, it can carry significant common mode 
current because the antenna is unbalanced by its surroundings. 
This would make the antenna noisier on receive. The solution is 
a good choke at the feedpoint, but it's tough to do that and 
handle high power unless the choke is wound with coax on #31 
ferrite cores. Again, study those references on my website 
about this. 

73,

Jim Brown K9YC


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