This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. Good
evening everyone! It's time for another episode
of HamTalk Live, episode number 248, Building
the Big Ugly Ballon, recorded live on Thursday,
February 25th, 2021. I'm your host, Neil Rapp,
WB9 VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're joined by John
Portoon, W6NBC. and we'll take your calls live
in just a few minutes. Last week, Mark Brown
in for BCD was here to talk about some encouraging
news about the Huntsville Ham Fest. If you missed
the show, you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive
.com or on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube.
and you can catch the rebroadcast of ham talk
live every saturday afternoon at about three
thirty p m eastern time over on w t w w that's
five zero eight five a m shortwave again w t
w w five zero eight five on uh saturday's three
thirty p m eastern Well, let me remind you about
the QSO Today virtual ham expo coming up again
on March 13th and 14th. Early bird tickets are
$10. As part of the speaker lineup, they have
all kinds of speakers. I believe it's like 80
or so. But ARRL CEO David Minster in A2AA will
deliver the keynote on Saturday, March 13th from
12 to 1 Pacific time. And in his keynote, he
will share some enthusiasm for advancing amateur
radio and highlighting some current ARRL initiatives
to engage and inspire. The current generation
of ham so check that out Okay, well we're gonna
talk to John here in a minute, but but we had
some sad news come our way yesterday My favorite
store on the planet Fry's electronics has closed
the doors and It was so much fun. You could go
in and buy You know a USB cable um something
from the as seen on tv section and and get lunch
all at the same time and and it was just a fabulous
place and and uh last few years have been pretty
rough uh and then um you know covid hit and and
so they have closed the doors so um fries uh
electronics is no more so so we're going to take
a moment of silence to remember fries All right.
Well get your questions ready to go for John
we're going to talk to him about The big ugly
so we're going to talk about that if you're listening
to us live on Thursday night You can give us
a call after the interview by calling eight five
nine nine eight two seventy three seventy three
Don't worry. We'll give out that number many
more times before it's time to call so you can
have it ready and We'll let you know when it's
time to call. You can also tweet us tonight.
It's at HamTalk Live on Twitter. And if you're
on Spreaker, there's the comments. and we have
a kind of a little chat room kind of thing going
on there in the comments. So you can do that
in real time as well. So I'll be back with John
right after this word from ICOM America right
here on HamTalk Live. Love is on the air at ICOM
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You're listening to HamTalk Live with Neil Rapp.
Welcome back to HamTalk Live. Tonight, John Fortune
W6NBC joins us on the Orlando Amateur Radio Club
and hamcation Zoom line. John's been a ham since
1965. He's active on 160 through 2 .4 gigs and
helps people get licensed. and helps new licensees
and manages a remote base on HF and VHF at Vandenberg
Air Force Base and does a lot of two meter and
40 meter mobile from his RV. He's married to
KF -60EB, has three married children, 12 grandchildren,
and John retired in 2002 and spent most of his
career working for KNBC. Oh, hang on. I lost
my sound effect here at KNBC in Los Angeles and
Ampex Corporation and Sony Electronics. So John,
welcome back to the show. My pleasure, Neil.
Well, we're talking about. The big ugly and and
and I had to I had to make this connection because
you know the term ugly ballon has been around
we'll talk about that maybe bit of a misnomer
but But there's there's this hamburger place
here in Indiana Called bubs and they and that
bubs stands for the big ugly burger and they
have this 22 ounce hamburger that would made
the Was it dine -in or dives or man versus food
or one of those big... Food network shows where
they they take on the challenge and then you
know If you eat the whole thing you get your
picture on the wall and all that kind of thing
and so they called that the big ugly so You know,
we're talking about ugly balance. I said, well,
we're talking about the big ugly, but it's not
the burger It's the it's the ugly ballon and
you have an article in QST about That so let's
talk a little bit about the ugly ballon and what
it's used for Okay, Neil Well, basically the
ugly ballon as it is a actually affectionately
called I think Just like any other ballot. It's
basically there to choke off RF from the outside
of the coax It does it It does it in much the
same way as a ferrite ballon that you might buy.
But it's called ugly because it's large and heavy,
because it's made by taking the feed line that
you're feeding your antenna with and turning
it into a big coil that creates an inductive
reactance in the outside of the shield. In other
words, a blockage or a high RF resistance in
the shield to block off current on the outside
of the line. And they're heavy and big. So sometimes
people think they're ugly. I don't. I use them
everywhere. They're particularly good at VHF,
which is where I often am. So that's why they're
called ugly balance. I think they look pretty
cool. Just you know, if you if you wind it tight
now, you know if you if your windings not real
great it might be a little ugly, but But yeah,
I think they look pretty cool. But yeah, they
are they do tend to be a little big Yeah, indeed
when you ask what are what are they for what
are they good for Well, or what do we need to
know to build one of them? well There are five
things that you need to keep in mind when you're
going to build any kind of a balance, an ugly
balance. And that is, don't pay attention to
the internet. There's a terrible lot of misinformation
out there about ugly balance. Every time I go
looking, I say, Oh, no, not another badly designed
ugly ballad. Because one needs to start with
an understanding of what a ballad does. A ballad
is basically a device to get rid of the RF on
the outside of the shield caused by the fact
that at the end of the coax connected to a balanced
antenna, there is a connection between the inside
of the shield and the outside of the shield.
which are separated by skin effect. It's the
same reason a Faraday's shield is separated inside
and outside. But the misinformation that we commonly
run into on the internet is that, well, you just
grab a bunch of coax and you wrap a bunch of
windings on any old piece of pipe and it's good
enough. That is not true. That is absolutely
not true. If you want that ugly ballon to work
right, there are some specifics. that you need
to follow. So the number of turns, the length
of the ballon turns, and the diameter of it do
need to be a specific size, a specific number,
if you want that ballon to work right. And the
reason is, is because the ballon has a self -resonant
frequency. That coil of coax out there is a parallel
tuned circuit, and it has a self -resonant frequency.
And if you don't work with that self -resonant
frequency right, your ballad may be not only
useless, but it may be counterproductive. So
you do need to be aware of the self -resonant
frequency. And what is the main consequence of
that self -resonant frequency? It limits the
range of the ballad. So those are some of the
things you need to keep in mind when you're building
one of these balance and calculating it. All
right, and if people don't know, why would you
put one of these things on? Why would you do
this? Well, it's the same reason you put any
ballon on an antenna to get rid of the current
that flows from the inside skin of the shield
on the coax around the end and out onto the outside.
And when it gets there, it does all sorts of
nasty things, simplest of which might be to bite
you in the lip on your microphone when it gets
back to the shack. But worst of all, it disturbs
the radiation pattern of the antenna because
it's part of the radiating antenna. It does radiate.
Also, it disturbs the SWR of the antenna. and
it also changes the tuned frequency of that antenna.
So if you don't have a ballon on your antenna,
all of those nasty things can happen. You need
to keep the RF inside the coax, where it is a
balanced line. Surprisingly, coax is not an unbalanced
line. It's a balanced line with a third wire,
the outside of shield. That's what makes it so
-called unbalanced. So that's going to keep,
or at least hopefully keep, the RF from going
in places you don't want it, like, you know,
back into your rig and into your electronics
and all that kind of thing. So... You mentioned
the number of turns and the length and the diameter
and all those kinds of things How do you go about
figuring that out for the bands that you're looking
at? Okay There's a very basic rule of thumb in
designing these balance these coax balance and
that is 200 ohms inductive reactants now many
people might pull up their skirts and run off
in a horror with the term inductive reactance.
It's just the AC resistance of a coil, the inductive
reactance. And it's measured in ohms, just like
common DC resistance is measured. That needs
to be 200 ohms, and not different than 200 ohms.
And the reason for 200 is 200 is enough to block,
pretty much block, the current on the outside
of the shield. But it's not too much. If you
make it more than that, and you shouldn't do
that, you shouldn't make it more than that, and
many websites recommend that you do, what you're
going to do is you're going to bring the self
-resonant frequency down into the operating frequency
of the ballad. And when you do that, it'll stop
being a ballad. So here's probably the number
one rule of doing coax balance. You want to calculate
the right number of turns, the right size, and
the right length of that coil so that the inductive
reactance or the RF resistance of that coil to
RF is 200 ohms. That's pretty much of a stand
mark. From there, that's a benchmark. From there,
you have to turn 200 ohms reactance into microhenries,
and then you have to turn microhenries into turns
and size and length. But there are some nice
little free calculators on the internet, which
I listed in my article, that you can get to do
that with. And I can do math, but I prefer the
online calculators. And so it's a matter of calculating,
beginning with 200 ohms inductive reactance at
the frequency you're operating, turning that
into microhenries. by math or by a calculator
and then turning microhenries with another calculator
or another equation into turns, lengths, and
diameter. Once you've got that, then you'll know
the right size to make the coil. So it'll do
its job but not limit the frequency range of
the ballon by having too low a self -resonant
frequency. All right, so last question here before
we take a break and give people a chance to Call
in here and let me give that phone number out
again. It's 8 5 9 9 8 2 73 73 and we'll give
that out again Soon, but keep that number handy.
We'll let you know here in a little bit when
it's time to call 8 5 9 What kind of antennas
would you typically want to put this on? I know
you mentioned some VHF stuff. Where would you
typically want to use this? Well, you can use
an ugly ballon or a coiled coax ballon. which
is what I prefer to call them, on any kind of
an antenna because it does the same job as a
ferrite balance that you might spend a lot of
money for. Ferrite balance are good, I use them
too, but you want to use it on an antenna in
which its weight and its size is not a problem.
Obviously, if you're trying to hang it up at
the feed point, the weight might be a little
difficult. Fortunately, usually though, you're
not doing that on 160 meters where you'd need
to make a big ballad. So it fits on any antennas.
On VHF, however, I find that often the mast is
made out of PVC. And therefore you can use the
mast of the PVC that the antenna is made on or
mounted on as a place to mount the ballad. And
it goes right below the antenna. Very handy place.
Fill a couple of holes in the mast. if you find
the correct number of turns around it, and you're
away. All right, very good. Well, we're going
to take some questions about these and talk a
little bit more about the big ugly with John
right after this word from Tower Electronics
right here on AmTALK Live. Thanks for choosing
Tower Electronics. How may we help you today?
We have PL259s, we have in connectors, we have
SMA adapters, we have BNC adapters. What can
I show you today? Where's the tower? Well, we
don't actually have a tower with us, but we have
all kinds of things you can use with a tower.
We have power poles, antennas, soldering irons
and meters. Where's the tower? Ma 'am, that's
the name of our company. We can't haul towers
to all the ham -fests across the country that
we visit, but we have almost every connector
and adapter you would need to connect your antenna
that's on your tower. I don't think there's a
tower back there. I really don't. Tower Electronics.
Visit us at a ham -fest near you or call 920
-435 -2973 or see our whole catalog at pl -259
.com. Sorry, one thing we don't have is a tower.
If you're a fan of Tim Allen's TV series Last
Man Standing, you'll have a final chance to contact
the show's amateur radio club station before
it goes QRT. The week -long KA -6 LMS radio special
event starts on March 24th at 0000 UTC and runs
through 2359 UTC on March 30th. This will be
an all -mode, all -band event. KA -6 LMS QSL
cards will be available for stations who contact
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Special event certificates, including clean sweep
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For more information, go to www .gsbarc .org
slash LMS. Join the conversation. Give us a call
at 859 -982 -7373. Again, the number to call
is 859 -982 -7373. Or, if you'd rather type than
talk, tweet us at HamTalk Live. Now, here's Neil
Rapp with more HamTalk Live. HamTalk Live with
Neil Rapp. Hey, baby. I'd love to be in your
grid square. Welcome back to HamTalk Live, thanks
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the show tonight. They help bring you HamTalk
Live each and every week. Coming up this weekend,
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Time Live right here at HamTalkLive .com. And
be sure to check us out on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. And before we get back to John
here and talk about the ugly ballon, we're going
to... Hear from Rick in 9GSU with this week's
Joke of the Week. I can't get my satellite radio
to work. It appears to be having serious issues.
Oh my goodness, well Rick's back next week with
yet another one. He sent me some new ones today.
So we'll get those ready for you. All right,
well now it's time for your calls. If you have
a question for John, give us a call at 859 -982
-7373 or you can tweet us at HamTalk Live. And
if you're listening to us on WTWW right now or
on a podcast, You won't be able to reach us because
we're doing this live on Thursday night, so we're
Memorex instead of live. Okay, well we actually
do have several tweets here, so let me get to
those. The first one came in early. Let me hunt
it down here. from John W7JKC and where did it
go? It was right here. Oh, John wants to know
if the number of turns makes a difference in
the frequency for the balance. So I think you
already addressed that, but any other comments
on that? Yes, the number of turns is quite important,
but so is the diameter and the length of the
of the ballad. The key in making a good coax
ballad is to make it square, which means make
the height equal to the diameter. Then your self
-resonant frequency will be as high as possible.
It peaks for a square coil. Don't follow the
guidelines on the internet that show long, thin,
many turn coils. That's a poorly designed ballad.
Also, One that doesn't have enough turns and
is too big in diameter is a poorly designed ballad.
Make your ballad square. If it's six inches in
diameter, make it the number of turns that'll
be six inches tall. Then you'll have the best,
most efficient ballad. All right, very good.
Brett, WI7BG brings in F equals MA. Conservation
of energy means that energy cannot be created
nor destroyed. It's back to physics 101 here.
And if that doesn't go down the shield of your
coax, it's got to go somewhere. So where does
it go? Well, that's really pretty simple. The
energy that's going back down the shield is part
of the energy that's coming up the coax from
your transmitter. So, if you're putting 100 watts
into the coax, then it's going out the end. And
whether it goes out the end into the antenna,
or part of it goes back down the coax, the total
is still the 100 watts that's coming out of your
transmitter. You're not creating new power. So
hopefully, we're releasing a little more power
out of the antenna, if everything's right. Yes,
we're releasing more power. The same power is
going out of the total antenna system, but the
outside of the shield is, if it's active there
is part of the antenna system. So part of the
power is going out the shield. Part of it is
going out the dipole that you want it to go out
of. All right. And then also do you need different
ones for different bands? Oh yes, very definitely.
The self resonant frequency. of the ballad, which
you can calculate. The little calculator I like
is called COIL64. Look it up on the internet.
COIL64. And it has a way to calculate the self
-resonant frequency. It needs to be above the
operating frequency of the ballad. But it's usually
close enough that it limits the total frequency
range of the ballad. of the ballad. A 160 meter
ballad will not go to 10 meters despite what
the internet will tell you. Don't make the ballad
too big. Too many turns is not a good idea. That's
too much reactance. So you do need to make it.
Now people ask, well, if it'll only go if an
of a 160 meter ballon will only go to 40 meters,
for example, or a 40 meter ballon will only go
to 10 meters, or a 10 meter ballon will only
go to six meters. How do I make it work all those
bands? Well, you can't. It's not a possibility
with a coax ballon. But how do you get around
this? Very simply, put more than one ballon on
the same coax. build one for 160, build one for
40, and build one for 10, and put them all in
the same coax, and they'll do the trick. Now
you've got a wide frequency ballad. If you want
a single ballad that gives you all frequencies,
use a ferrite ballad. They have shortcomings,
they're expensive, and they heat up if you try
to use them at high SWR, but if you want a single
ballad that covers all bands, use ferrite. But
coiled coax ballads are great for One band or
one or two bands All right, very good so RJWY7AA
sent us a picture and and John I don't know if
you're on Twitter or not, but I may have to send
you this picture if you're not afterwards so
you can see this but RJ says a big ugly saved
me during the seven Kyuso party one year with
the 40 meter dipole up which by the way in the
picture is next to the his famous El Camino it
would shut down his IC 7000 what he keyed up
and he grabbed one of his water jugs and yes
the hams favorite friend some duct tape And a
few wraps and he was in business again. No calculations
were done at the time, just dumb luck, but you
can see here the coax coming out of the El Camino
and going around the milk jug with water in it
a few times and then right over to the antenna.
Yep. Soda bottles, water balance, make pretty
good, ugly balance. Just don't, just don't overdo
the number of turns. All right. Oh, we've got
more here Chris says does the number of turns
matter as much as the total coax length and is
there a standard size for a ballon that will
work from 160 through 10 so you got part of that
but Does the number of turns matter as much as
the total coax length? They're pretty much directly
related So does one matter more than the other?
No, they both matter and they're directly related.
But again, I emphasize there is no ugly balance
that will cover 160 through 10 meters. Don't
believe the websites. They're wrong. These are
people that don't understand ugly balance. All
right. Well, that's all of our tweets that we
have. Let me... check and see if we have any
messages on the speaker and if you want to give
us a phone call you can do that right now at
859 -982 -7373 again 859 -982 -7373 give us a
call right now And you can ask your questions
from John Portun, W6NBC. And he's written an
article in Q Street for February about the big
ugly ballon. And I believe you also have one
of the AWRL learning webinars coming up, as well
as the virtual ham expo that you'll be talking
about some stuff. But I believe the the ARRL
one is is about the ugly balance. Is that right?
Yes, that's correct. It's not scheduled yet,
but it will be on presently. And yes, I will
be speaking at the QSO today virtual expo on
March 13. But it won't be on the balance. It'll
be on my The antenna that I mentioned recently
has been gaining such great popularity. The double
inverted delta skeleton slot antenna for HF.
I mentioned it in my talk on slot antennas, which
is also in my Amazon Kindle eBook on slot antennas
for ham radio, if you'd like to avail yourself
of a copy of that. by simply searching by that
name. And that's what I'm talking about at the
Ham Expo. And what I'm particularly talking about
at the Ham Expo in regard to that antenna is
how to use it without having to buy an expensive
auto tuner by using it as a mono bander. Mono
banders are quite satisfactory to lots of hams.
So I'm showing at the QSO Expo how to use the
double inverted Delta skeleton slot as a mono
bander for a lot less money than buying one of
those remote auto tuners, which work well, but
they're expensive. Okay, very good. 859 -982
-7373 is the phone number. And Chris has another
question here. So if I have an ugly ballon that
works, say on 80 meters, will using that antenna
and ugly on the other bands cause issues or increased
loss? No, the ballon is not a lossy device. The
RF is going down the middle of the coax. But
if you have an 80 meter, a balance really designed
for 80 meters, a square 80 meter ballon of the
right number of turns and the right diameter
and the right height, it will only work down
to maybe only work up to let's say about 15 meters
or so. They have a limited frequency range at
most about 3 to 1. So don't try to use an ugly
ballon over a wider frequency than that. And
again, I re -emphasize. Don't believe the websites
that tell you, oh, just fill the 160 meter ballon
and it's good for all the higher bands. No, it's
not. The self -resonant frequency will eat you
alive. All right. Some good advice there. So
thank you for that. If you want to give us a
call, do that now. It's 859 -982 -7373. We're
going to wrap things up here shortly. So I want
to give one last opportunity for people to call
and we'll check the tweets here again as well.
But I know somebody on one of the forums already
mentioned, why do we call this a ballon? And
so talk a little bit about the origins of the
name, the ugly ballon, and where that might apply
and might not. Well, first of all, the term bal
-un, which comes from balanced, unbalanced as
an acronym, is a valid term. But unfortunately,
it masks the real purpose of a ballon, which
is to keep the RF off the shield of the coax.
because because of skin effect there are three
wires in coax the outside of the center conductor
the inside of the shield and the outside of the
shield and due to the connection natural connection
at the end current gets on the outside the purpose
of the ballon is to get rid of that outside and
to keep the coax a balanced line now the term
ballon originated, I think, about the same time
as coax began to be popular with hams just after
the Second World War, where coax was used extensively
for the first time. And the term ballon got into
the vocabulary of ham radio. And that's what
people think. Stand up at a radio club sometime
and ask, what's the primary purpose of a ballon?
And hams will shoot up and they'll say, oh, it's
to convert balance to unbalanced. Yes, that's
true. But that's not the primary purpose. And
that's where the term ballon was originated.
I much prefer coax shield choke. That's what
to me the device is. And in fact, the ballon
changes coax from unbalanced three wire coax,
three wire transmission line, into balance two.
two wire transmission line only the inside coax
is not unbalanced it's balanced with a third
unbalanced with a third wire get rid of it and
it's a balanced transmission line inside of a
faraday shield it's perfectly balanced inside
very good all right so so we'll call it the the
uh coaxial coiled uh choke But it just doesn't
it just doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
I think that's maybe it No, it doesn't All right.
Well, I think we're through all of our questions
and comments here for tonight John so Thank you
so much for being here and sharing with us as
you do from time to time about some antenna issues
of one type or another and thanks for coming
on and talking about the big ugly and we'll do
it again soon with something else. That'll be
fine, Neil. I look forward to it. Always got
things to talk about. All right. Well, that's
John Portun W6 NBC and We want to thank him for
being on the show and that is a wrap for this
week's episode of ham talk live Thanks also to
everybody out there in cyberspace for listening
and typing in tonight with your questions And
we invite you back next Thursday night at 9 p
.m. Eastern Time when Jim Wilson, K5ND will be
here to talk about VHF contesting and roving.
And for a list of all of our upcoming guests,
visit HamTalkLive .com. If you like HamTalk Live,
please leave us a review wherever you listen.
It helps others find us faster and... We're about
to finish up our giveaway in February to people
who leave us reviews on Apple podcasts or iTunes
as it was formerly called. We're giving away
some free t -shirts to people that leave us a
review in the month of February. So what you
do is launch Apple's podcast app on your mobile
device or iTunes on your computer. search for
ham talk live click on the logo and then you
can scroll down to write a review and make sure
you leave your call sign in your review so we
can send you a shirt so we'll contact you and
find out what size you need and get a shirt to
you so do that in the next few days here we're
going to end the contest at the end of the month
but We appreciate reviews at any point on any
platform, but that's where the contest is right
now. So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
7 -3, 7 -5, and may the good DX be yours.