Ham Radio Help Desk

While researching construction techniques for choke baluns I stumbled across a harsh reality.

The price of Toroid pieces can vary immensely depending on where you purchase it.

Case in point:

A 2.4 inch outside diameter ring toroid with type 43 material costs $13.65 from Palomar Engineers. The same thing costs $3.79 from Mouser.

Both are, I am pretty sure, model 5943003801 from Fair-Rite.

I just purchased twelve from Mouser at a bulk price of $3.51 each.

Price differences are what they are, but wow… this is a bit amazing. I am not afraid to pay good money for good things; I am not a cheap ham. However, I will draw the line at paying 3x the price for the same thing.

The topic of balanced to unbalanced converters is broad, detailed and deserving of study to apply them where needed. However, this post will discuss the simplest balun of all… the Choke Balun.

Many balun designs convert impedances 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:9 and up.
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A company called SteppIR Antennas, Inc. offers a unique solution to the problem of using one antenna for many bands. Their flagship products are Yagi beam antennas for masts that adjust element lengths for frequency, front-to-back ratio, etc. Since they tune dead-on to the desired frequency the Yagi proportions do not ever have to worry about the third Yagi parameter… antenna bandwidth.
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