EFHW Balun

Based on the work of Jan, DJ1JAN I've build some QRP-1:49 UNUNs.

My first experiences with this board on 20m using a FT82-44 core are, that the core gets hot at 5W on 20m / 14MHz.

Based on this experience I consulted the mini Ringkernrechner and and did some calculations. As far as I understand, the primary coil with 3 turns limits the maximum usable power.

 IMG 7281

14MHz / 20m Band

mrk1

The voltage of 19Veff equals to 7W HF and that about 1W is burned inside the core!

7 MHz / 40m Band

If we switch to 7MHz the core with 7W input is in saturation:

mrk2

On 7MHz you can use only 3.5 W HF (=13Veff) from which 0.77W is converted to heat.

mrk3

3.5MHz / 80m Band

Switching to 3.5MHz reduces the maximum power down to 1.6 W (=9Veff):

mrk4

Now I've build another balun using an FT82A-43 core. This core has the same diameter but is nearly twice in height. This gives an AL of 850 instead 470 for the FT82-44 core. 

This gives an increase of nearly factor x2 for the usable power:

Core / frequency 3.5MHz 7MHz 14MHz
FT82-43 1.6W 3.5W 7.0W
FT82A-43 3.2W 7.0W 14.0W