A few years back I bought a Buxcom G5RV and running 600 watts into it,
the balun that it came with was toast. I replaced it with 10 turns of
coax wrapped around a Folger's coffee can. Reading what G5RV had
written about his antenna, he recommended that a balun not be used with
his antenna. See last link at
http://www.metaphoria.us/hamradio/ham_radio.htm
Jozef WB2MIC
Brett gazdzinski wrote:
What is the benefit of a balun?
I cant run them, as I run legal limit AM which
will toast any balun I ever heard of.
At 100 watts, or QRP, RF in the house cant be an issue,
I don't have problems with the AM and the G5RV right over the house.
I would think it would just add more loss.
I used to have resonant 80 and 40 meter dipoles, but took
them down and built a home made G5RV, #12 wire for the open wire
line, and only about 20 feet of RG214 coax into the tuner
or directly into the K2 with its built in atu.
I will have very high swr on both the open wire line
(does not matter as there is almost no loss),
and the RG214, but there is only 20 feet of that, so I would
guess the loss is slight.
Now I could fit a balun if I just used the K2, but what
would be the advantage?
I hear you should never run a balun with any swr, the losses
go way up. I think they now make tuners with the balun
before the tuner (rig, balun, tuner, antenna) that works
well....
Brett
N2DTS
The following happened to me a few years ago as a brand new ham in my
pre-Elecraft days and I wonder if anyone can explain to me
the details. I
apparently had high swr and exceeded the rating on my balun.
It suffered
accordingly but didn't completely fail. The result was when
I transmitted cw on
40m an internal fuse would blow in the stereo which was on in
the next room
room. It took two go rounds before I caught onto the cause
and effect... A new
& better balun cured the problem.
At the time I had a Zepp (135') and 4:1 balun at the house
entrance. I assume
the ruined balun was emitting all sorts of RF that the stereo
amplifier picked
up, tried to amplify, and couldn't. But I don't understand
exactly what would
make it draw that much current. Can someone enlighten me?
By the way, since then I put up a dipole, halfwave for 160m,
about 200' behind
the house. That's what I should have begun with.
Thanks!
Mike ab3ap
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