Hi Rich,
This DXE balun is just a hefty 1:1 choke balun It's a high grade coax (50ohm) wrapped through ferrite cores. The balanced terminals are floating and the unbalanced end is connected to the aluminium housing and the shield of the 6 foot length of RG213 coax which connects the balun and my tuner. I have a balun inside my tuner too, but I don't use it: it's a 4:1 current balun and in this application with a multi-band loop, I prefer to use the external 1:1 balun. I agree - with my loop , anything that changes the feedline length, even by smallish amounts, alters the impedance seen by the tuner at the end of the line and the manual tuner settings change on (usually) multiple bands and the KAT3 has to reconfigure its LC settings. I expected that, as a function of the impedance transforming effect of the feedline, but what I didn't expect was the very significant difference that different shack "grounding" arrangements would make to the whole process of matching the antenna system at the shack end of the feedline. About the common mode current that I'm measuring on the coax between the balun and the tuner: Yes, I assume the 1:1 balun has sufficient common mode impedance to be preventing common mode current standing waves on unbalanced side of it. But I think what I'm measuring is current that's being induced in the coax shield because it's lying in the near field of radiation of the loop. Again, what is a mystery to me is how changing the grounding arrangement on the balun could affect the magnitude of that. I find this intruguing, but for the moment, I've put the clip on ammeter away. I'm going to forget it, while i digest this, and go and play on 20m instead. Thanks for all the comments I've rec'd, on and off the list. 73 John VK7JB -----Original Message----- From: elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Richard Fjeld Sent: Friday, 21 September 2012 1:00 PM To: elecraft posting Subject: [Elecraft] Fw: Balun Ground Connection John, It is unfortunate that we can't see a schematic of how the balun is wired. I have thought of doing that same thing to be able to use an ATU. Presently, I have an 80 meter loop fed with homebrew 450 ohm ladder line to a tuner with a 1:1 balun within. It works beautifully on all bands. I wish I had done it many years ago. As for your grounding the coax at both ends, I effectively do that here also on my coax switch with coax to my K3 which is also grounded. So that is why it would be necessary to see the schematic to see what is different about your situation. I can tell you that I have everything grounded to a 'ground tree', or earth tree as our friends call it. I buried a 6 ga. wire from the central point over to my tower. I grounded it at 2 or 3 places along the way, and the tower is grounded at each leg with a separate ground rod. When I did make the final connection to the tower ground, I saw a change in the swr of my beams which are at DC ground, and coax fed again similar to what you are doing. The swr got higher, but not bad. Maybe it went up point five or less. From my experience, any time I change ANYTHING relating to my antenna system, the SWR changes. As for #2, the common mode current, I thought a balun is supposed to stop that from happening. Rich, n0ce ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html