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Re: [TowerTalk] Test Fixture for Common Mode Chokes

To: "towertalk@contesting.com" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Test Fixture for Common Mode Chokes
From: Brian Beezley <k6sti@att.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2026 18:49:53 -0800
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
One last thing. Common-mode choke impedance is sensitive to capacitance across the choke. (The Y21 method suppresses shunt port capacitance, not port-to-port capacitance.) Proximity to anything conductive can affect results. So can proximity to a dielectric, especially a lossy one. A wooden table is not good. Placing the choke on a thick piece of styrofoam should isolate it quite well. Styrofoam is mostly air along with a little polystyrene, a low-loss dielectric with a relatively low dielectric constant. The figures I use for styrofoam type 103.7 at 10 MHz are a dielectric constant of 1.03 and a loss tangent of 0.000023. That's getting pretty close to air. I don't know of anything better except hanging the choke in air itself. That's actually not a bad idea if you can do it in a stable way.

Depending on the accuracy you need, you may be able to skip these precautions. First measure with them in place. Then relax things and see how much results change.

Brian

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