Shorting winding sections of a ferrite cored EFHW transformer

A chap recently posted some advice on construction of a dual ratio transformer for EFFHW antennas, advice with an informative pic, but without measurement evidence that it works well.

Pictured is a dual UnUn. I made this for experimenting. It's both a 49 and 64 to 1 UnUn.

The 49 to 1 tap uses the SS eye bolt for the feed through electrical connection and the SS machine screw on the top is the 64 to 1 connection. If I want to use the 49 to 1 ratio, there's a jumper on the eye bolt that connects to the top machine screw where the antenna wire is attached. The jumper shorts out the last two turns of the UnUn. Disconnect the jumper from the top connection and now you have a 64 to 1 ratio.

The advice to short the section of the winding (the white wire in the pic) is really bad advice.

Tapping an air cored solenoid can be effective and with low loss… can be… but not unconditionally. Tapping a ferrite cored inductor almost always has quite high Insertion Loss, it is akin to shorted turns in an iron cored transformer, … so if you try it, measure it to see if the outcome is acceptable.

Keep in mind that flux leakage degrades broadband performance, so conductors wound loosely around the core (as in the pic) and wide spaced single layer windings (as in the core) tend to have higher flux leakage and poorer broadband performance. Measure what you make to verify that it did what you think.

An S parameter file from a two port sweep over HF would be informative.

I offer this analysis without measurement evidence to prove the case, but sometimes an understanding of basic circuit analysis allows one to avoid wasting time on poor designs.