Don, when it comes to ladder lines and baluns the only real expert was Jerry Sevick and he has gone to a better place where they only use resonant beam antennas. Take anything anyone is living says about open wire feeders and baluns with a grain of salt. Put your antenna back like it was when it worked. Ignore further advice from the living. Since I am still living, more or less, feel free to ignore this advice as well! Willis 'Cookie' Cooke K5EWJ & Trustee N5BPS, USS Cavalla, USS Stewart
________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 3:12 PM Subject: [Elecraft] ladderline and balun question Gents, I have a ladder line and balun question that I hope someone can guide me thru. I had a good working antenna system with two antennas. First being an Alpha Delta Dipole and the second a 2WL 160m loop antenna at 40 ft in the air strung in trees. So the wire does touch the trees. Dipole is fed with coax and choked at the feed point and the loop was fed with 60 ft of ladder line to a 1:1 current balun then 25ft coax to the shack tuner. Then the amp and radio. This combination was working real well no RF problems in the shack. I was advised that I would obtain better results for better SWR at resonance and easier matching if I removed the 1:1 balun and went to a 4:1 balun. I made this change with everything else being the same. I now had RF in the shack again. I then added an isolation balun to the system by adding 6ft coax from the output of the 4:1 to a balun designs 116du which is supposed to have 4500 ohms of choking impedance on 160m and over 5000 ohms choking impedance on 80 and 40 meters. This did not eliminate the RF and I am still having problems. So here is the question, is it possible that with the combination of length of the ladder line at 60ft plus the 6 ft plus 25 ft of coax I am at a feed line length that will be a problem no matter what I do. I keep looking at the internet to try and figure this out but I am confused as some information I find says it only applies to 1:1 baluns or other factors. So anyone who can help me understand this feed line question I will be greatly appreciative. Thanks Don ~73 Don KD8NNU ______________________________________________________________ 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 ______________________________________________________________ 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
