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OK, this is going to sound like the typical eham trollbait, but it's not... I am having an issue with my antenna system and just wanted to bounce it off you folks here.
Antenna is a 67' dipole up about 30', center fed with about 16' of windowline to a 4:1 balun, then a short piece of coax from the balun to the barrel mounted in my basement window frame. From the other side of the balun is another section of coax, appx 10', going straight to the shack, into my tuner.
When I use my FT840, it goes to an MFJ tuner, then to the rig. According to the tuner (MFJ), I am usually able to get it down to 1.5:1 or less on 20 and 40. When I connect the coax direct to the K2 or my KX1 (both with autotuners) the best SWR I'm seeing on either band is 5:1.
When I attach the windowline to the elecraft balun and plug it straight into the K2, I get 1:1, no problem. Even if I attach a short coax jumper, say 2', I still am good to go. But once the coax between the balun and the K2 gets much longer than that, the SWR tanks.
The system does work fine, I am getting some decent contacts. But I'm just wondering if there's a "magic length" behind the balun I need to be shooting for, or if it's just going to get infinitely worse the longer it gets.
Thanks for your patience with a newbie question!
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