Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Great questions, one which highlights my own knowledge gap beyond knowing that for a given feedline and antenna combination, you’ll have some measure of impedance. At the most basic level, your radio will “see” some impedance value. In the amateur radio world this is generally 50Ω. If our antenna system (feedline + radiator) presents 450Ω (quite common), we use a 9:1 transformer to get it to match. This allows us to use our radio on that system without (1) stray current returning to the radio and damage our transmission circuits, and (2) at full power but with inherent loss of signal owing to antenna inefficiency.
Case in point, I have a commercially-purchased multi-band EFHW antenna which presents varying amounts of impedance to the radio. This system includes a transformer (I think it’s 9:1) so that on the bands of interest, there’s a resistance match and as a result an SWR that’s suitable to make decent transmissions on.
As a tangential example, J-pole antennas have a built-in matching system which uses no special parts. It’s composed of a matching section and radiator. The combination of matching section, radiator length, and physical feedpoint allow this type of antenna to sort of self-manage impedance.
The difference here is that a j-pole is a monoband antenna, and a long wire with transformer can often be functional on many bands, depending on length, where the lowest useable frequency is the inverse of its length.
So by using a transformer, I think you are essentially lowering the voltage to exchange for current. What I do not understand, assuming that simple assumed relationship is correct, is why it is still at thing people do. Like if we lived in the old days of vacuum tubes or bipolar junction transistors, sure it makes sense that a little more current might help. Now, in the era of rail to rail op amps with JFET inputs, I don't understand why anyone needs to create the Eddy current losses of a transformer. Maybe it is safety from transients? But then why attenuate... and why not resistively for a more simple RLC element... very curious now...
There is certainly a lot to learn, and you would benefit greatly from joining the hobby officially. If you are US-based, you can take the amateur radio exam after memorizing the answers for the exam (a legal and encouraged practice), the exam itself can be administered remotely via Zoom.
I am beyond my technical knowledge if I tried to explain why we use transformers to get an impedance match; I only know what we do.
transformers are not the only way to do this, and some other circuits can be used instead. if you take a transformer with 1:2 winding ratio, then if on one side current is 1 and voltage is 1, then on the other current will be 0.5 and voltage 2, which means that impedance increases 4x. in EFHW, it's 1:7 winding ratio and impedance ratio is 49x, which works for end-feeding a half-wave dipole, just as expected (from 50 ohm to ~2500 ohm). that transformer is a limitation on power usable in this antenna and main reason to use this type of antenna is mechanical
most importantly, transformers work nicely only if you have real impedances, so your antenna has to be resonant anyway. l- or pi-network tuner will also handle complex impedances so doublet or random wire will work nicely with it, as long as you can accept weight and losses in tuner