One easy way to tell if an RFC is good across the antenna terminals is to check the SWR before and after installing it on *each* band.
If the SWR doesn't change, the choke is good to go. What you're checking is for adequate reactance at the lowest frequency and no series resonances on other frequencies. I'd play it safe and check at frequencies near the bottom and top of each of the bands - at least those more than 100 kHz or so wide and especially the higher frequency bands. The old RFC10 was designed for that duty, of course, but it was used from 1.8 to 30 MHz. I'd check carefully for sign of it moving the SWR if someone wants to use it on a K3 at 6 meters. If a choke isn't handy, I'd not worry much about having a d-c short over a 50K resistor. The intent is to bleed off the static charge as it accumulates and a 50K resistor will do that very well. The antenna presents a limited capacitance and the charge accumulates relatively slowly. It doesn't take much of a path to ground to pass enough current to keep the d-c charge near zero. Ron AC7AC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
