Month: May 2021

(How) does this balun work? A variation on the theme …

My article (How) does this balun work analysed a balun configuration sent to me by a correspondent, apparently published on Youtube channel TrxBench.

Essentially, my analysis was that it comprises two 12t winds of two wire transmission line in parallel on the ferrite ring. The potential benefit was that the characteristic impedance Zo of each transmission line is probably close to 100Ω, and the parallel combination is probably close to 50Ω.

Online experts following fashion are opining that a low Insertion VSWR balun is better made with two wire line(s) than winding a single 50Ω coax line. They make these claims without evidence, I am not convinced.

In that vein, here is a variation on the TrxBench balun above.

The designer describes it: Continue reading (How) does this balun work? A variation on the theme …

Last update: 8th May, 2021, 9:14 AM

Some pretty woolly thinking on measuring Thevenin equivalent source impedance of a ham transmitter

A ham seeking to optimise his station based on some measurements with a VNA and some modelling of a matching network posted the results of a test in the process.

The radio is an Icom IC-7300. I bypassed the built in tuner, transmitted a tone into my external tuner, adjusted it for SWR=1. I then disconnected the tuner from the radio, and measured the impedance looking into the tuner with a VNA. Surprisingly, (to me anyway) the result was a pretty good 53-j3 Ohms at 14 MHz.

What should we / have expected? It is an interesting case to study. Continue reading Some pretty woolly thinking on measuring Thevenin equivalent source impedance of a ham transmitter

Last update: 3rd May, 2021, 6:37 PM

Collins 30-L1 on FT-8

After a lot of grief with Excel trying to open and fix some 10 year old spreadsheets… finally…

I was recently asked about FT-8 on the Colling 30-L1 linear amplifier considering my article Collins 30L-1 and AM.

The first thing to note is the Colling 30-L1 manual cautions against AM and FSK:

That said, what are the reasons for such a prohibition? Continue reading Collins 30-L1 on FT-8

Last update: 2nd May, 2021, 9:37 AM