[TowerTalk] What am I missing....balun

[Jim Thomson]

Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2017 11:41:07 -0600
From: Kelly Taylor <ve4xt at mymts.net>
To: Wes Stewart <wes_n7ws at triconet.org>
Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] What am I missing....balun

Hi Wes,

Yes, the enclosure is mandated by the choice of coax. Doesn?t mean you have to choose that coax, however, does it?

If you can see $900 of value in it, then by all means, buy one. I see, maybe, $100 in parts. Maybe another $50 in assembly costs. Throw in a good profit margin and money to pay for the engineering and I still don?t see the value rising to $900.

But from the picture, showing just one turn through the ferrites, it appears to be the equivalent of a $900 bulkhead connector.

If the smartest guys here can?t see a correlation between the photo and the published specifications, something?s off, one way or the other.

More people are questioning it than defending it. Don?t forget, that with Array Solutions? reputation, I went looking at it hoping the critics were wrong.

73, kelly, ve4xt 


##  If you want to wind high power coax through 2.4 inch OD torroids,  RG-393 is the only game in town, that is flexible enough, and small enough turn radius, to handle 10 kw on the 11m  band. 
Box costs money, ditto with painting it etc, plus gasket..+ mounting plate from box to yagi boom.   7-16 Din chassis  female cost $40.00   Torrids are cheap.   393 coax is now priced stupid, like over $10.00  per foot.   The  6 x 10 kv rated
comp caps are not cheap, nor are the pair of standoffs.    The coax has dual silver plated braids at each end.   They have to be separated and  routed separately to adjacent corners of the 7-16 din
mounting screws, via tabs.   It all has to be silver soldered.  That coax can hit  200 deg C.    Probably 2 hrs  to assemble, at least. 
Published specs are for swr only, expressed as return loss.   No stated Z or RS  specs.   2 turns through the  stack of 6 cores seems a little thin to me.  It would be interesting to compare that  config to say 3 urns through the same 6  cores.
The box does not have to be metal, a plastic, gasketed nema box will also work. 

Jim   VE7RF