BobS wrote:
Thanks to everyone for their responses.
If I wanted to start with installing a balun between antenna and
feedline is this a situation where price does matter? Universal Radio
has The RF Systems Magnetic Longwire Balun (MLB)for $80USD and this one
listed on on Ebay http://tinyurl.com/yf3v2lz is $20 (9:1 Longwire,
Balun, Unun,Adapter, Shortwave) Not trying to be cheap, but just to "see
if it works" $80 is expensive and $20 is reasonable.
Also, must the balun be installed outside to work? The more I have
outside the better chance it will be detected by the "Condo Police".
Bob
Bucks County, PA
Remove "MYHAT" for email response
I'm not familiar with the seller, but for your purposes, the lower cost
one should work well. He's reduced his costs by using off the shelf PVC
pipe parts.
I'd put the impedance matching transformer as far as possible from noise
sources. If the best you can do is the window sill, well that's the
best you can do.
Something to consider is thin coax like RG-174 is a bit less obvious.
If you could shoot a run of that to a tree, you could hide the balun
among the branches.
Doubling the distance from noise will reduce the noise signal by a
factor of 4.
In my case I have my swl antenna 225 feet in back of my house and I send
the coax through underground pipes I had installed. It comes out at my
storage shed. I did it for the noise, but it's quite stealthy.
My only regret is I didn't run heliax so I could use it for transmitting.