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#antennas — Public Fediverse posts

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  1. #HAMradio #Antennas #AntennaTheory #RFI

    I got a choke #balun in place on the #OCFD just after the coax enters the house.
    The cable going outside to the balun on the antenna itself is KMR-400.
    The inside coax is some old 10Base-5 cabling I had lying around. (Two layers of foil, two braids, solid conductor core, about the size of the KMR-400 or RG-8 or 9913.)
    The split is there so I can tie the coax to ground (unscrew outside from inside and screw outside to the PL-259 connected to the house ground directly) in case of a lightning storm.
    The choke is RG-8x (the small stuff) wrapped around a cylinder about 5 inches across. 13 turns, taped to keep it cylindrical, with quite a few snap-on ferrites on the radio (inside) side of the leftover 8x .
    I was able to test 20m last night, and the tuner had a MUCH easier time tuning the OCFD for that band. The RF coming back into the shack on that band is greatly reduced.
    I get to test the other 8 bands today.. to see whether the plotted SWR points are similar to what the #NanoVNA says... without the choke, it was an "anything goes" situation.
    Wish me luck!