End Fed Half Wave matching transformer – 80-20m – 2xFT240-43 variant

A reader of End Fed Half Wave matching transformer – 80-20m asked if a better transformer could be made with a stack of 2 x FT240-43 cores and using half the turns.

The original transformer above comprised a 32t of 0.65mm enamelled copper winding on a FT240-43 ferrite core, tapped at 4t to be used as an autotransformer to step down a load impedance of around 3300Ω to around 50Ω.

A very rough approximation would be that with two stacked cores, the number of turns would be around the inverse of square root of two, so 70% of the original.

A more detailed analysis of the effects of magnetising impedance on InsertionVSWR and system loss when it is in shunt with a 50Ω load was performed.

Above is the expected core loss.

Above is the expected InsertionVSWR.

These both look encouraging, and the next step would be to build and measure some prototypes.

To the original question, would half the turns be enough? No. Notwithstanding that, you are likely to find such being used, being sold.