Well, it seems to me that between those nice ground straps and the coax jumpers
there are a lot of "one turn loops" that might well couple RF back to places
it's neither wanted nor expected.
And having had a "current balun" literally melt and begin to smolder, I
suspect I might be able to understand the reluctance to have one anywhere but
the feedpoint of a Yagi. However, I also run a Titan 3, as well as a 425, on my
Orion with no problems at all. Other than the fact that every update turns the
keying loops off. Annoying, to say the least!
My shack has a number of rig to amp and amp to tuner cables permanantly
installed. Each has a ferrite current balun between the rig and the amp and
another between the amp and the tuner. During all the rig testing and amp
swapping around here I noticed the effect some rigs have on some amp's tuning,
and I don't like touchy amps. Neither do I particularly care for RF output
backing down with low indicated SWR.
So I put the baluns in and have had no trouble with them a'tall. And since you
are running open wire line a balun on the coax to the tuner should be cool
enough not to overheat. At least not at a legal power level. A ferrite balun
would break up any pickup loops accidentally built into the system, and since
it's only a few inches of low loss coax it won't eat up a lot of power either.
Since my "interesting experience" with baluns I also use them either directly
at the antenna or between the lightning arrestor and the shack. They seem to
run cool, as indicated by an infrared thermometer, at either location . But
putting that same current balun a half wave so down the coax from an antenna is
asking for a fire. As I found out one night. I'm just glad the mess was
strapped to a tower leg instead of to something that would ignite.
Anyhow, that's my two kopecks on the subject
73 Pete Allen AC5E
--
Never squat with your spurs on
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