[Elecraft] Baluns & wires & feeders (oh, my!)

[wd4lst at windstream.net]

I have been following the 135 ft flattop thread with interest. I was running my K1 into a 40m wire vertical via 100 ft of RG8x. After doing some loss calculations, that seemed pretty silly, so I set out for a more efficient. arrangement. I just put up a 40m folded dipole (same diameter wires) fed with 300 ohm window line. My K1 (with internal atu)tuned it well, but rf reeked havok on the K-40 keyer and such, so I used the BL2(4:1) balun and all seems well (probably time to do maintenance on the shack rf grounding system). My question is this: Is there a way to measure the insertion loss of the balun? Perhaps setting up my scope to do a differential measurement on the output of the balun w/ a 300ohm dummy load? Also, I could rig a way to sweep the antenna/window line with the antenna analyzer.
Any suggestions?
72s,
Pete
wd4lst


Pete Axson
WD4LST
17901 NE 18th Ave
Citra, FL 32113