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Tune Around! Topics For
Technicians!
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How To Build a 4:1 Current
Balun This article presents a project to construct a 4:1 (four to one) current balun also known as a "Guanella" balun. The balun I made was constructed in the Summer of 2009 and has been neatly hidden in my engineering notebook since. Antennas are a fascinating aspect of radio and baluns are an integral part to most radio amateurs stations. The term balun "... is a contraction of the words balanced to unbalanced. It's primary function is to prevent common-mode currents, while making the transition from an unbalanced transmission line to a balanced load such as an antenna"1 One of my favorite wire antennas is the Off Center Fed Dipole (OCFD) (really a doublet, good topic for another article) for it's solid performance and useful operating characteristics. My balun will be part of an OCFD I plan on having some K2GXT members help construct during the winter along our underground tunnel system as a neat, quick, and fun one meeting side-project.
This project can be used
for a variety of applications not pertaining to just OCFD's, another
popular use is in converting coaxial cable into balanced feed line (200
ohm). Any application where matching 50 ohms to 200
ohms impedance would also benefit from this project. If you have
never built a balun before then this might be your invitation to do so. I
first built one of these during a local club meeting back in Massachusetts
with the Billerica Amateur Radio
Society about five years ago. All the
transformer parts come in a kit, however you are given the freedom to make
whatever style balun that may be of interest. One thing I would like to
stress is that all metal hardware such as nuts, washers, and bolts are
stainless steel in this project. Any metal hardware used on antennas
should be stainless steel when possible because it will not corrode which
helps keep a good electrical and mechanical connection for years. However,
you cannot solder to stainless steel which demands other methods of
joining the metal such as nuts and bolts. Designing and Building the
Balun The easiest way to start building
a 4:1 current balun is to order the The HBM200 can handle 2KW (2000 Watts) of continuous power indefinitely and support peak power levels of 4KW when matched correctly. The largest enemy to toroids comes in the form of overheating which can crack them, rendering the balun useless. This design is engineered by W2FMI to be 98% efficient which means little heat will be created inside the balun during operation. To properly match the 50 ohm coaxial cable to the feed-point impedance the balun performs the 4-to-1 transformation 50 ohms * 4 = 200 ohms and the opposite for receiving which converts the 200 ohms to 50 ohms.
Winding the Toroid The most dreaded part about building a
balun is winding the transformer. To be honest I used to avoid building an
electronic circuit if it had a toroidal inductor in it that I had to wind,
they scared me. The first step to constructing the transmission line transformer is to prepare the wire for winding. Take the magnet wire and slip the Teflon tubing over the entire length, both wire and tubing should be close in length, but may not be exact. Once this is done fold the wire end-to-end and cut at the crease which is obviously the center of the wire. Pair both wires together evenly and secure with electrical or medical tape which also works good, the Teflon tubing is the dielectric, not the tape which is just securing the wires together. Space the tape several inches down the entire length of wire. There should now be roughly six feet of paired Teflon covered wire-pair ready for winding on the toroidal core. The 4:1 current balun uses two bifilar windings each containing eight turns. A bifilar winding simply means that are two wires following each other. Similarly we would use three wires in a trifilar winding, simple eh? Start by leaving about one inch of wire hanging off the end to connect to later. Make one turn through the toroid as tightly as possible, it doesn't matter what direction you wind in whether it be clockwise or counter-clockwise. After making the winding secure with a wire tie to hold the wire in place. For my current balun design I continued to wind a total of eight turns through the center of the toroid. Try to wind them tightly but not overlapping. Fitting all the wire on the toroid is a tight squeeze at best. Leave a few inches off the end to connect at another time and cut the several feet of wire-pair off to use on the other side of the toroid. Half of the toriod should now have wire on it, the other half should still be bare.
With the first winding done, the hardest part is almost over. Take the remaining paired wire and do the same method on the other half of the toroid except this time wind in the opposite direction. For example, if you wound clockwise first now wind counter-clockwise starting from the same end. There should be enough wire to make both windings tightly with a little left over to make connections with. Don't worry about a little overlap near the end of the windings, refer to the pictures for examples of a correctly wound balun. When it's clear that all your handiwork is correct, secure the end of the second winding with a wire tie. Now we get to solder the wires together to get a functioning transmission line transformer. Following the schematics shown above, which should make sense since we already labeled the wires before winding (I hope you did!), take wire-end number one and connect it to wire-end number five which should be right next to it. Also connect ends four and six together with short wire leads. Ends three and seven are connected together to make the center conductor wire pair for the 50 ohm side. Ends two and eight should be free and are used to connect to the antenna, they should be left long for now. Be careful not to short the wires out on the toroid which will not end well if power is applied, just keep some of the Teflon tubing long enough to protect the end of each wire. I heat-shrinked the exposed solder connections as can be seen and used appropriately sized eye-hole mounting hardware to attached to the stainless-steel screws. Connecting it all Together It's time to put the balun
down and focus on where to install it. Since my design was going to be
outside I needed to consider weatherproofing the balun. I decided that I
was going to use an antenna insulator to hang the balun below rather than
use the balun enclosure as structural support. The pictures below show how I decided to mount the balun inside
the case. It is really important to keep wires on the coaxial cable side
of the balun as short as possible. My connection to the N-type chassis
mount connector was about 2cm long. The ground connection was made to a
screw holding on the connector with a #8 solder lug (eye-hole) and 4-40
screws while I soldered in a small piece of #14 wire to the center
conductor since it was accidentally too short, learn from my mistakes and
try to avoid that if possible. I use N-type connectors since they are
actually 50 ohms and rather weather resistant unlike SO-239 UHF
connectors which are well known to not be 50 ohms due to the soldered
center conductor and need considerable help weatherproofing. however, this
is personal preference in the end.
Attaching the 200
ohm end of the balun to the antenna isn't as critical with length;
the wire are now part of the antenna. I had about 6 cm of the wires left
so I went up three centimeters and out three centimeters to make the
connection with #8 solder lugs attached to the external bolts. This
kind-of mimicked where the wire in the antenna should be, though I am
confident that this more aesthetic than practical at HF wavelengths. The
8-32 screws used for the antenna connections were installed from the
inside out so they could be locked in place with nuts and worked with
easier. Three nuts were used per bolt per side. The balun is mounted
securely by being squeezed between two pieces of Plexiglas and a two inch
#10 bolt used to position the balun so that the connectors don't have much
tension on them. Squeezing the balun in place protects against mechanical
vibrations that could crack the soldered connections over time. I like
making projects as failsafe as possible; good electrical and mechanical
connections must be accounted for. Additionally, the metal bolt does not
affect the baluns performance because an ideal balun contains the magnetic
field within the toroidal core. Testing the
Balun The best way to test the
current balun is with an antenna analyzer like the MFJ-269 antenna
analyzer. While one could hope for the best and just throw the balun on
the air, I enjoy testing prior to installation. The baluns' test resistive load measured 196.8 ohms with a
multimeter, close enough for me. The total length of the load was about
seven inches between the terminals. With RF one must keep connection
lengths as short as possible. The table and graph show the resulting VSWR
values measured with the MFJ antenna analyzer attached to the 50
ohm connector as shown in many of the photographs. The broadband
performance of the balun shows that it's doing its job very well and I was
satisfied with its performance of 1.3:1 across the HF spectrum. A VSWR
performance of better than 1.5:1 is likely better than other portions of
the antenna system such as SO-239 and PL-259 connectors, so I'm not
worried about the 1.3:1 SWR at the balun. To further test the balun,
connect the ground lead on the coaxial cable side to both sides of the
antenna terminals and between the two 100 ohm resistors independently
measuring while at each location. If the balun stays relatively stable
your in good shape, mine jumped to a 2:1 SWR when doing this which is
fine; jumps of SWR greater than 10:1 should cause concern. This is however
a rough test so take it in stride.
Final Assembly This baluns' mechanical design cannot
support a large amount of weight or tension alone. I plan on mounting the
enclosure by attaching it to PVC, Plexiglas, or fiberglass which in turn
takes the tension and of the antenna. The last step in construction of the
balun is sealing it. RV sealant works really well if applied generously.
Apply the sealant to the antenna screws by backing them out slightly and
working some into the threads, tighten them back afterwards. Seal the eye
hook and balun Plexiglass bolt the same way. The best way to weatherproof
the N-type connector that I have found is to apply sealant around the edge
and over the nuts and bolts generously wherever water can get in. It might
be best to let the inside dry before sealing the lid down. The lid on my
project box is sealed last with a bead of sealant around the edge of the
entire box cover followed by the cover itself and screws to tightly hold
the lid down. Some people may prefer to drill a small hole at this time
which always faces down allowing condensation inside to drain out but rain
to not get in. Conclusion This Guanella current balun is practical, relatively easy to construct, and incredibly useful to all radio amateurs wishing to construct a worthy HF antenna such as the off center fed dipole. Antenna performance is considered by many, myself included, to be more important at times than the performance of the radio. A bad antenna system will cause any radio to under-perform. This balun will handle the full U.S. legal limit easily and provides a bit of educational fun during construction. I encourage anyone who finds this article helpful, inspiring, or that may have any questions or corrections to let me know! Email...my call sign at arrl.net. KB1LQC 1: American Radio
Relay League. "Coupling the Line to the Antenna." Antenna
2: Transmission Line Transformer Handbook. Jerry Sevick. (You may be able to find this book on the used market or do a search on Google for a download...editor!) http://www.collegearc.com |
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