Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that have
reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by 30MHz, I'd
really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less (...and still have
a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). This seems quite doable simply by
making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd just like to find a place that
offers such inductors off-the-shelf rather than having to wind my own.
Inductance in the ballpark of 1-10uH would be good, although it's not
critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for a
receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners do).
Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't so much, and
anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.

Thanks,
---Joel

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

On Apr 23, 6:01*pm, "Joel Koltner"
wrote:
Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that have
reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by 30MHz, I'd
really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less (...and still have
a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). *This seems quite doable simply by
making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd just like to find a place that
offers such inductors off-the-shelf rather than having to wind my own.
Inductance in the ballpark of 1-10uH would be good, although it's not
critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for a
receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners do).
Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't so much, and
anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.

Thanks,
---Joel

You'll be limited by physics, Joel...I know you know that, but I think
it's worth putting bounds on things. If you're willing to use a coil
on a powdered iron core, you should be able to get the sort of Qu
you're asking for in a fairly compact coil. If you want to order
production quantities, you can easily find vendors willing to wind
specific coils for you, but if you want just one or a few, you may
have more difficulty. I've had situations where I wanted to avoid the
distortion of a powdered iron core, and used some "air core" coils
(actually phenolic, I think) from API Delevan and equivalent ones from
Gowanda. They were "stock" values, but I learned that they commonly
build them when they get an order, but try to have a few around they
can ship as samples. But again, they aren't as high Q as you want at
the lower HF frequencies.

For an air-core coil at HF, you can estimate the size required for a
given Qu pretty accurately as Qu = 100 * D(inches) * sqrt(f(MHz)).
That's about right for a coil the same length as its diameter.
There's a chart in the Sams/ITT Reference Data for Engineers book that
gives essentially a correction for the length, if it's shorter or
longer than that. At lower frequencies (AM broadcast band, and up to
a very few MHz) you can do a bit better with the appropriate Litz
wire. Anyway, for example at 4MHz, expect to need an air-core coil
about 1/2 inch diameter to get Qu around 100.

It used to be that you could buy a supply of AirDux or equivalent coil
stock, and just cut off the number of turns you needed for some
specific inductance. My answer to that these days is to thread some
plastic tube on a lathe, and have a few different thread pitches
around, then just wind magnet wire down in the groove to get what I
need "on demand." It's easy to do the winding and makes a nice,
uniform-looking coil. I've used that technique to make sets of coils
for reasonably sharp cutoff bandpass, lowpass and highpass filters
with very low distortion that I've used to characterize the distortion
performance of amplifiers and the like.

Sorry that I don't have a better source of ready-made coils...maybe
someone else has.

Cheers,
Tom

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

"K7ITM" wrote in message
...
On Apr 23, 6:01 pm, "Joel Koltner"
wrote:
Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that have
reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by 30MHz,
I'd
really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less (...and still
have
a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). This seems quite doable simply by
making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd just like to find a place that
offers such inductors off-the-shelf rather than having to wind my own.
Inductance in the ballpark of 1-10uH would be good, although it's not
critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for a
receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners do).
Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't so much,
and
anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.

Thanks,
---Joel

(snip some of Tom's good stuff)

"It used to be that you could buy a supply of AirDux or equivalent coil
stock, and just cut off the number of turns you needed for some
specific inductance. My answer to that these days is to thread some
plastic tube on a lathe, and have a few different thread pitches
around, then just wind magnet wire down in the groove to get what I
need "on demand." It's easy to do the winding and makes a nice,
uniform-looking coil. I've used that technique to make sets of coils
for reasonably sharp cutoff bandpass, lowpass and highpass filters
with very low distortion that I've used to characterize the distortion
performance of amplifiers and the like."

"Sorry that I don't have a better source of ready-made coils...maybe
someone else has."

Cheers,
Tom


Apparently, AirDux is still available:

http://www.airdux.com/

73,
John

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

On Apr 23, 9:01*pm, "Joel Koltner"
wrote:
Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that have
reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by 30MHz, I'd
really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less (...and still have
a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). *This seems quite doable simply by
making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd just like to find a place that
offers such inductors off-the-shelf rather than having to wind my own.
Inductance in the ballpark of 1-10uH would be good, although it's not
critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for a
receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners do).
Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't so much, and
anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.

I usually design my filters to work reasonably well with lowish Q
inductors, say 100, so that I don't have to ever worry about the
actual Q. My rough measurements is that a Q of 100 is reasonably
reached using ferrite toroids not too far off from their optimal
frequencies etc. But some have done very good measurements of many
different coil types in search of extremely high Q inductors, the best
writeup I know is at:

http://w7zoi.net/coilq.pdf

His conclusion was that Q's of 300's over an octave or two on ferrite
cores are very practical.

Other experiments and measurements he does go through Litz wire, Litz
rope, spider coils, etc. achieving some spectacularly high Q's.

I don't think any of this helps your "off the shelf" requirement, but
ferrite cores work well within their frequency range.

Tim N3QE

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

Thanks for the information, guys -- it's very useful. I'll plan on winding my
own coils initially, I guess.

Hey, weren't we supposed to have room-temperature super-conducting wires by
now!? Grumble

---Joel

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

"Joel Koltner" writes:

Hey, weren't we supposed to have room-temperature super-conducting wires by
now!? Grumble


That and hover-cars. Where's my hover-car? You kids get off my lawn!

-n1gak

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

On Apr 24, 2:07*pm, Lawrence Statton wrote:
"Joel Koltner" writes:

Hey, weren't we supposed to have room-temperature super-conducting wires by
now!? *Grumble

That and hover-cars. *Where's my hover-car? *You kids get off my lawn!

I want a pair of jet pants, so I can pull them on and fly off the
balcony like Astro Boy!

Tim.

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

In article
s.com, Tim Shoppa writes

On Apr 24, 2:07*pm, Lawrence Statton wrote:
"Joel Koltner" writes:

Hey, weren't we supposed to have room-temperature super-conducting wires by
now!? *Grumble

That and hover-cars. *Where's my hover-car? *You kids get off my lawn!

I want a pair of jet pants, so I can pull them on and fly off the
balcony like Astro Boy!

Yeah - and all the other stuff that in the past they said we would have
by now. I want my stuff......... :D

http://www.davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm


John
G0QAJ
--
JC Morrice

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

Joel Koltner wrote:
Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that have
reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by 30MHz, I'd
really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less (...and still have
a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). This seems quite doable simply by
making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd just like to find a place that
offers such inductors off-the-shelf rather than having to wind my own.
Inductance in the ballpark of 1-10uH would be good, although it's not
critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for a
receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners do).
Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't so much, and
anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.


There isn't much of a market for this stuff anymore, at least not since
the days of cloth-insulated wire :-)

Since it's for a receiver, how about building a Q-multiplier? Ok, many
youngster will scoff at that as being "archaic" but those things can
really rock.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

Joerg wrote:
Joel Koltner wrote:
Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that
have reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by
30MHz, I'd really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less
(...and still have a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). This seems
quite doable simply by making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd
just like to find a place that offers such inductors off-the-shelf
rather than having to wind my own. Inductance in the ballpark of
1-10uH would be good, although it's not critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for a
receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners
do). Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't
so much, and anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.


There isn't much of a market for this stuff anymore, at least not since
the days of cloth-insulated wire :-)

Since it's for a receiver, how about building a Q-multiplier? Ok, many
youngster will scoff at that as being "archaic" but those things can
really rock.

I second that motion (since I'm not doing the work...).

I had thought of suggesting it, I should have done so.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Source for high-Q HF inductors
 

Tim Wescott wrote:
Joerg wrote:
Joel Koltner wrote:
Are there some vendors of readily available (stock) inductors that
have reasonably good Q's (100) throughout the HF band?

I'm familiar with something like the Coilcraft "maxi springs"
(http://coilcraft.com/maxi.cfm), and while they hit Q's of 100 by
30MHz, I'd really like something that's already there by 3MHz or less
(...and still have a self-resonant frequency of 30MHz). This seems
quite doable simply by making a larger coil with thicker wire, I'd
just like to find a place that offers such inductors off-the-shelf
rather than having to wind my own. Inductance in the ballpark of
1-10uH would be good, although it's not critical.

The goal here is to try out making some adjustable notch filters for
a receiver (by switching L's and C's in and out, like antenna tuners
do). Hence, high Q is important, but power handling capability isn't
so much, and anything smaller than a breadbox is fine size-wise.


There isn't much of a market for this stuff anymore, at least not
since the days of cloth-insulated wire :-)

Since it's for a receiver, how about building a Q-multiplier? Ok, many
youngster will scoff at that as being "archaic" but those things can
really rock.

I second that motion (since I'm not doing the work...).

I had thought of suggesting it, I should have done so.


But now we gave away our age ;-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/