Telamon wrote in message ..

Isn anyone going to comment on the transformer not showing a higher S
meter reading on the radio? This sure surprised me. Maybe the two
stations I picked happened to be in a good spot where it wasn needed.

Not too surprising.. Will depend on the freq. Being your antenna is
folded, I would have to model it to see the src data for each
shortwave band. I'm guessing it would be about as for a single wire
version, except the with appx 4 X transformation of the folded
antenna. Anyway, the feed impedance will vary all over the place from
band to band. You probably have about as good a chance getting a
usable match without the transformer, as you do with it. In some
cases, the transformer could actually make the match worse. Some will
be better. Some about the same. This is a common scenario when
running an antenna like a G5RV. Most use 4:1 baluns. But really a 1:1
balun makes about as much sense being you are already using a tuner.
Of course, I don't like the feeding of the average G5RV's. I'd dump
the coax and feed straight with ladder line. I don't like mixing
feedline types and then using a balun to try to assure a good match
between lines. Usually, the match is not very good, and you have more
loss. But this is mainly a transmit issue, not receiving at HF. MK