If that balun had overheated and become ruined on 12m it almost certainly would have affected other bands as well. A ruined balun is a changed balun.

Dave   AB7E



On 1/9/2013 7:26 AM, Brian Alsop wrote:
Sounds like the 4:1 balun may be overheating on 12M. Chances are if you've been doing this for a bit, it's ruined. Heat anneals the core and changes it's electrical properties for the worse. Heat may have cracked it.

Now whether a 4:1 balun is the thing to use is another issue.
You don't say how long your open wire line is so it is impossible to estimate the impedance seen by the balun.

Here are the approximate antenna feedpoint impedances for a 120' double 50' up.

80M 47 -j188 SWR=17:1 4:1 balun at antenna feedpoint makes situation worse
40M 1724 +j1869  SWR =75:1  4:1 balun at antenna helps
20M 415 + j880  SWR =45:1   4:1 balun at antenna helps
15M 186+281j    SWR =13:1   4:1 balun at antenna helps
12M 1293-155j    SWR =63:1   4:1 balun at antenna helps
10M 122.4-j100  SWR =4:1    4:1 balun at antenna helps

It is clear that 12M may be close to the worst of the lot

If one knew the electrical properties and length of the ladder line, one can do the impedance transformations and determine just what impedances the balun sees. One may end up with entirely different conclusions from above. The G5RV is an example of a "doublet" antenna where the ladder line length is pruned to find an acceptable match on several bands.

73 de Brian/K3KO





On 1/9/2013 13:41, Jim Miller wrote:
I strongly suspect you have a common mode problem. These can be very
frequency dependent.

Read: http://audiosystemsgroup.com/RFI-Ham.pdf especially the section on
common mode chokes. There is a cookbook near the end for band specific
chokes.

For more details on the math read:
http://fermi.la.asu.edu/w9cf/articles/balun.pdf

I'd also recommend you take out the 4:1 transformer.

Good luck

jim ab3cv

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Ron W3ZV <[email protected]> wrote:

At least I'm pretty sure its an RFI problem. I have a K3, KAT500 and the KPA500 connected as recommended with Elecraft DB15HD cables. The antenna is a 120ft. doublet fed with ladder line to a 4:1 balun and 10ft of coax to the KAT500. I have a comment point ground to a ground rod six foot from the shack. I have operated the amp at 400+ watts from 80m to 6m. The only band that gives me a problem is 12m. When I am operating at 400 watts ssb, the
amp will fault with a high swr indication within 5 to 20 seconds.
Immediately prior to the fault the swr on the amp display was 1.2:1.
Reducing power to below 300 watts seems to avoid the problem.

Assuming the consensus is that this is RFI, what would be the most likely suspect? Coax cables in/out? DB15HD cable? Power cable? What's the easiest
way to diagnose and correct the problem? Thanks

Ron W3ZV




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