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Re: [TowerTalk] 2 Meter Balun Question

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 2 Meter Balun Question
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 09:48:52 -0800
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 11/21/2013 5:19 AM, Patrick Greenlee wrote:
At a height of 50 ft or so it worked quite well on both bands. The coax ran inside the aluminum mast. No ferrites were used.

As N6BT has long observed, everything "works," even a light bulb as an antenna. A primary purpose of a common mode choke on a feedline is to minimize the coupling of noise from the feedline to the antenna.

As to using the marine-band antenna on 2M -- it depends entirely on the design of that antenna (its impedance vs frequency), the length of the feedline, and the output stage of your transmitter. If the mismatch is large enough, the output stage will provide less power, both because it is mismatched, and also because it "folds back" (reduces output to protect itself). The mismatch will add a bit of loss to the feedline, but that won't be a lot if you're using big coax like RG8/RG213 -- the line isn't long enough for this to be a big deal unless the SWR is greater than about 4:1.

The best answer is to get the data sheet for the antenna and study the graph of SWR vs frequency. Or get one of these antennas and measure the SWR with a decent meter. FWIW, 10% bandwidth is fairly wide, but two of our ham bands are that wide or more. 160M is 10%, 80/75 is nearly 14%, and lots of us are able to match our wire antennas to our rigs and work a lot of DX.

73, Jim K9YC
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