No apologies needed Dave. Based on the posts here over the past decade, your question is *very* list-appropriate.
Don's comments are "right on" as always. Any warming of the balun is RF energy that was never radiated. At low powers, any noticeable heating is likely a big chunk of your power. And a balun is completely unnecessary in most cases. About the reciprocity issue, keep in mind that almost *any* receiver has plenty of gain to make up for poor antennas, where your transmit "gain" (rf power) is strictly limited. So almost any antenna will seem to "hear" much better than it transmits. That's why on-ground and even underground antennas often do very well for receiving but are abysmal transmitting antennas. The big issue with receiving is usually signal-to-noise ratio. Your transmitted signal is quite unaffected by local QRN, but your received signal is terribly affected by such noise. (Again, that's why some use on-ground or underground antennas for receiving. Local QRN is usually attenuated much more at ground level than the signals arriving from overhead, so such an antenna, while not providing as loud signals as a true "skywire" will often provide superior signal-to-noise ratios. The receiver makes up for the overall lower gain and so often you hear signals much better than with a skywire.) Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
