14-01-2022, 01:16 PM
(14-01-2022, 10:10 AM)VK5WRJ Wrote: Thanks for the replies people.
I'm leaning toward making up my first antenna sans balun, will probably include one at a later date once I have gained a greater understanding of what I'm doing.
Seems many don't see any need to include one in the setup, I don't live in an uban area, so neighbours are not a real problem.
Will roll the dice and see what comes up.
Yeah - don't do that!
If you want a dipole to behave like a dipole then you must have a balun. Even a perfectly symmetrical dipole over good ground will not have a good pattern without the balun.
Fundamentally you are going from a balanced antenna to an unbalanced feed line. A balun transforms BALanced to UNbalanced. Hence the name.
Without the balun one side of the coax becomes part of the antenna and you will get radiation from that coax and potentially RF in the shack as Doug has pointed out. It will also be a pain to tune.
A balun can be made simply by wrapping coax around an appropriate ferrite core - see pic. This balun forms the feed to my multi-band fan inverted-V dipole that covers 160m through to 6m.
regards
Tim