Our trailer setup for the October 2013 ARES Field Day
Our trailer setup for the October 2013 ARES Field Day
Antenna Setup and tests CERT Trailer 11/03/2013
Antenna 80 Meter Windom OCF. Constructed from Wireman 546 14 gage FLEXWEAVETM. Total length
125.7 feet. ( 78.2 foot and 47.5 foot legs.)
Center at 19 1/5 feet from ground. Center support mast fiberglass attached to end side of 15' aluminum trailer
with ends tied to scrub oak about 10' off the ground. Trailer setup at W6CAW QTH on very dry decomposed granite
soil, high desert. Testing three balun's on the same antenna wire setup.
Click on images below for a larger graph.
Using my 4 to 1 with 21 turns of #16 magnet wire on a Palomar F140-6
core. Winding detail the same as my Putty
Knife balun's.
Housed in a weatherproof electrical box from Lowes. ( The Palomar Engineering website is temporally down
due to the passing of their founder )
The |Z| at 7.35 MHz is 34.4 Ohms and 42.7 Ohms at 14.5 MHz. No attempt
was made to adjust the wire lengths to bring the dips down closer
to the phone band as I want to compare the balun's with all other conditions unchanged.
Dark line, Using
my 4 to 1 with 12 turns of #16 Teflon covered magnet wire on a Palomar
F140-6 core.
The light line is the graph of
the 21 turn 4 to 1 balun, top graph on this page.
The ideal, according to what you read on the Internet, is 14 turns but I ran out of room. Housed in a weatherproof
electrical box from Lowes.
( The Palomar Engineering
website is temporally down due to the passing of their founder )
The |Z| at 80M dropped to 50.1 Ohms. 32.4 at 40M, and 39.5 at 20M. Does not look like turns ratio makes much difference?
Using my Guanella
current balun built from the Amidon FT-240K core.
Wound per instructions in their Transmission Line Transformers Handbook page 31. Amidon sells a kit with the core, wire, Teflon, and book.
Where did that dip at 1.980 come from? Looks like finding out is another
project. See this link for more on this balun.