[Elecraft] Re: KAT100 with Ladder Line

[Dave Van Wallaghen]

> 
> Nothing bad happens if you leave the balun out, Peter!
> 
> Sometimes we over-complicate things. A balun is a good example. All that's
> needed to produce a balanced "feed" is a length of transmission line (1/4
> wave or so) and a balanced load. If you have those things, it doesn't
> matter
> whether the output from the rig is "single ended" or "balanced", the
> currents at the balanced load, such as the center of a dipole, will be
> balanced.
> 

I played around with this idea this past summer and fall (at Ron and Don's
suggestion) of using an open feeder fed directly to my KAT2. I put up a 66'
doublet about 30' high in some trees in my front yard. I fed it with 33' of
open line I put together with wooden dowels as spacers. As you might
imagine, it tuned up just fine on 40m. In fact, I could tune up fine 80m -
10m with some problems on 20m and 17m. I then made some open feeder stubs
for those bands that would bring me to some 1/4 wavelength interval and then
I could get them to work FB.

As Ron said, it is hard to measure the efficiencies on air. All I can say is
that I would wait to get my sig report and reciprocate and then tell the
other station I was running 5 watts. Many times I would get a "wow - you
have a great sig out here for only 5 watts". Most of the time I operated in
the mid - late afternoon - mostly on 40 and 20m. Many who answered my CQ
were running 75 - 100 watt stations and commented how well my K2 sounded at
their QTH. I know this is all subjective - but is indicative that feeding
the balanced feedline, with a little care, with the unbalanced output of a
KAT2 or KAT100 can be accomplished and can be highly efficient.

I did operate with the BL2 also, but running 5 watts, never noticed if I was
heating up the balun or not. Not sure if I could or not. With Ron's
suggestion to remove the balun (with the mindset of - why put something in
the antenna system inefficient if you don't have to) it seemed to me to not
only work, but work well. YMMV.

So thanks, Ron, Don and others on this list. It was a fun (although not very
scientific) experiment which I plan to do again when the weather warms back
up in the spring. I'm also playing around with the idea of bringing an open
wire feeder into my shack as well. I may play around with a balanced tuner
design as well.

73,
Dave W8FGU