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Re: Balun Questions

Posted by Brett Howard on Jul 23, 2010; 5:41pm
URL: http://elecraft.85.s1.nabble.com/Balun-Questions-tp5328810p5330551.html

This sounds really similar to a lot of plans that I've seen... One
other piece that I've noticed on many of these that no one seems to
ever mention is that the two 1:1's are usually wound in opposite
directions on each half of the core...  I'm assuming this helps to
reduce the coupling between the two 1:1's?  Also I'd be interested to
hear people's thoughts on this "improved balun"...  Seems to be an
attractive solution.  It only pictures the schematic here and I kinda
picture it as being wound similarly but you wire one of the turns on
one of the feeds from "out" side to "in" side.  Essentially the ends
of the wires would fold back over the core to get to its location...

Soon here I should have all sorts of cores and wire and I was planning
on trying a few of these and measuring them with the 259B and seeing
how they come out.  But to go beyond that I'll need some sort of
antenna probably to do further testing cause I don't have enough loads
nor do I have a 200ohm dummy... ;)

I'll be ordering the Sevik book as well...

Thanks gentlemen.

~Brett (N7MG)

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Jim Brown <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:34:54 -0400, Tom W8JI wrote:
>
>>The 100 ohms is the differential impedance, or transmission
>>line impedance
>
> Tom is the balun expert around here, but he isn't telling you
> everything he knows, so I'll float a simple 4:1 balun design
> that should work quite well up to moderate power levels. As
> Tom's analysis shows (on his link), there are conditions of use
> where high power can overheat it.
>
> So to respond to your question with a direct answer, for a 4:1
> balun, I would build it from two common mode chokes, each choke
> wound on its own 2.4-inch o.d. #31 toroid. Each choke needs 14
> bifilar turns of #14 THHN. As you have noted, the chokes should
> be wired in parallel on the 50 ohm side and in series on the
> 200 ohm side. One of the important conditions that makes this
> work (or not work) is that the common mode impedance must be
> quite high to prevent the choke from overheating, and to
> minimize power loss. These chokes provide nearly 5000 ohms
> common mode impedance from 2-30 MHz. The impedance is
> predominantly resistive.
>
> Bifilar means that you form a transmission line from two equal
> lengths of the #14 THHN, tightly spaced so that their
> insulation touches, and either tape them together or hold them
> together with Ty-wraps, then wind that parallel wire
> transmission line around the toroid. You'll need 2.5 inches of
> each wire per turn, plus 5 inches for connections at the ends,
> then cut off the excess after winding. Sevick said that such a
> line is pretty close to 100 ohms, and my measurements suggest
> that he was right. Two of these in series/parallel gives you a
> pretty good 50:200 balun.
>
> What are conditions that can overheat it?  Running high power
> (greater than about 500 watts) AND in a condition that places
> high common mode voltage on it. You might also get into trouble
> at somewhat less power with key-down modes like RTTY. High
> common mode voltage will be present if the antenna is severely
> unbalanced (for example, an off-center fed antenna), or if the
> transmission line is close to a half wave (or multiple of half
> waves). At low power, you'll never run into a situation that
> will overheat a balun like this, but you could when running
> high power.
>
> There's a tutorial on my website that talks extensively about
> common mode chokes. It is NOT about baluns, and I don't pretend
> to be an expert on baluns, but I do know a lot about common
> mode chokes. :)
>
> http://audiosystemsgroup.com/RFI-Ham.pdf
>
> 73, Jim Brown K9YC
>
>
>
>
>
>
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