Monday, May 11, 2015

Baluns

Here are a few selected articles that were referenced during our recent on-air discussions of baluns, and voltage vs current baluns in particular:

Balanced - Unbalanced - Balanced, by VK5AJL
Lots of good definitions and illustrations.
See the comment posted below by N4NR. Other sources refute the author's contention that current baluns are only designed for 1:1 ratio.

Baluns: What They Do and How They Do It, by W7EL
An illustrated discussion by the author of EZNEC software.

Choosing the Correct Balun, by W8JI
An article that our group has consulted many times.

Broadband Baluns
Focus on air-core and ferrite-bead choke baluns.

Common Mode Chokes
A chart of impedance measurements

Special thanks to W4PRE who directed me to the Chattanooga Amateur Radio Club website that includes many good antenna-related topics on the Links page.

1 comment:

Dennis said...

Thanks John for the balun links.,

One thing I'd like to point out is some people (like VK5AJL included win your links) will say that there is no such thing as a current balun other than a 1:1 ratio. That is a misleading statement. Current balun ratios other than 1:1 can be built by using a guanella balun design.

All 4:1 current baluns I have seen (including the one I own) are guanella baluns.

A google search will turn up numerous explanations of guanella 4:1 baluns.