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Re: [TowerTalk] Test Fixture for Common Mode Chokes

To: "towertalk@contesting.com" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Test Fixture for Common Mode Chokes
From: Brian Beezley <k6sti@att.net>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2026 06:45:02 -0800
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
AB7E wrote:

"Any thoughts on this text fixture?"

Dave, I completely forgot that I had contacted Halibut Electronics, the fixture manufacturer, a couple years ago. Mark Smith sent me two .s2p files and photos of chokes he had measured through the fixture.

One of the chokes had two Fair-Rite mix 31 ferrite tubes (not cores) in series. Each was separately wound with three loose turns of "ultra flex" RG-8X. The S21 and Y21 |Z| plots were not that close and both had funny wiggles (the same was true of the R plots). Shunt capacitance was 6-7 pF (but much larger below 20 MHz). Dissipation factor (DF) was very high at 30-50%.

I do not think these results are characteristic of the fixture. They are inconsistent with those of the second choke, which was 13 turns of RG316 on an FT140-43 core:

https://iili.io/fQHD64j.png

|Z| was essentially the same for the S21 and Y21 methods, as was R (30 MHz max). Except for noise at lower frequencies, shunt capacitance was very low:

https://iili.io/fQJB4Mx.png

DF was between 10% and 20% above 15 MHz, but much higher below 7 MHz. These are unusually high values (a few percent is typical). Where did the loss come from? The NanoVNA V2 Plus4 Mark used did not generate S12 and S22. The analysis set S12 = S21 and S22 = S11. This is reasonable for a symmetrical device and fixture. Mark said he placed the choke in as much empty air as possible for the test. He used the calibration standards in the fixture.

Other than the odd DF values, I'd say the fixture looks fine.

Brian

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