Nooelec Balun One Nine

[invergordon]

Has anyone any experience with this device? Is it just a gimmick or does it work on long wires?

 

[majoco]

Well, it says it's for the HamItUp converter so I guess it'll do the HF bands, but those little figure-8 cores are usually only used at the old TV frequencies - 45MHz and up. I guess it it's made of FT43 material it may work - the price is right! A core from South Island Components and two bits of wire will do just as good if not better!

Wind yer own....

www.dxing.info/equipment/impedance_transformer_bryant.doc

 

[invergordon]

Maybe we can discuss this later! I can follow instructions but I'm no good at design work and formulae.

 

[BrotherStare]

it would be okay for and indoor wire antenna but if your longwire is outdoors you'd have to seal it up in a waterproof enclosure or run your longwire into the house in which case you better hope there's no lightning nearby. how would you ground it?

 

[nanZor]

Has anyone any experience with this device? Is it just a gimmick or does it work on long wires?

Works great! It has two modes, but you must choose which to use, which involves cutting a trace for a balun, and not the default un-un. I use it with my loop-on-ground project seen here

https://forums.radioreference.com/receive-antennas-below-30mhz/370110-160-20m-log-loop-ground.html

Here's the deal:

It comes from the factory wired as an "UN-UN" with a center-tap to ground on the antenna side. See this schematic:

http://www.nooelec.com/store/downloads/dl/file/id/40/product/192/balun_one_nine_schematic.jpg

Generally for a longwire you want to connect the main longwire element to the pin that has the "dot", or start of the winding.

With the sma connector facing left, and looking down upon the parts side, the main element would attach to the top push-in connector. The bottom push-in connector is used for your counterpoise, radials, etc.

BALUN use for loops, dipoles, etc:

On the back-side of the balun is a single small circuit board trace. You cut / scratch through that to break the center tap connection to ground. This is the "zero ohm" resistor seen in the schematic.

Now you have a bal-un, along with physically / galvanically isolated windings!! Which is great, although I would still follow that up with a ferrite coax sleeve choke, like an MFJ 915, W2DU, DX-engineering, Balun-Designs LLC, or your own diy with quality ferrite.

In the real world, it is actually rare to have an antenna like a dipole perfectly balanced to the environment, so the default setup by Nooelec might work, or work better by swapping the dipole leads. But do try cutting the trace to turn it into a balun. You can just solder-blob the trace back together if you want, OR use the empty through-hole as a convenient way to put in a switch.

Performance seems good, better than my high-powered transmit 1:9 balun on receive, but I don't have the equipment to qualify that statement really.