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Tuner Genius and a doublet antenna
Tom
Comments
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@Mr Radio as you note the best solution for many antennas is to use a balanced antenna tuner. Many hams force an antenna into an unbalanced condition using a BALUN. There is no way around the laws of physics and you will have heat losses. You may need to run your rig at reduced power to prevent self-protections from activating. The good news with the PGXL and the TGXL is they have very fast self protections to prevent damage to their systems. My advice is to use a very high quality BALUN from BALUN Designs. Their BALUNS are the best I’ve seen. Start testing at a couple of hundred watts.
73,
Mack
W4AX
TGXL Program Manager
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Most amps limit matching SWR to 3:1 to avoid failures. New Experts amps set a limit at 5:1. At home I use MFJ-998 with up to 1.5KW, expecting it to fail every time, and it keeps on going for years, even when running. I use 1:1 baluns because of lower losses - see
http://www.karinya.net/g3txq/tuner_balun/.
One balun is by Balun Design. Second by running bifilar teflon 18 ga wire around FT240-61. Little heating and no evidence of problems in either. 4:1 baluns are sometime preferable if the tuner is weak. Less range required from the tuner but higher losses in the balun. Higher losses are usually low in casual operation but may be excessive when running at full power.
PGXL is, I think, targeted for serious contesters, who usually have low SWR antennas. For them the tuner is unimportant, perhaps with the exception of 160m.
Ignacy NO9E
0
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