Amazon Balun Upgrade

 

A little while ago I bought a cheap $20 balun from Amazon for HF. I threw it up with two elements cut for 20m up a squid pole. 

Being a QRP balun, I was able to work 40m to 10m with a tuner at about 25w. Wanting more power, I decided to upgrade the internals from a 4:1 to 1:1 transformer

 

The balun came pre-wired with a small torroid and really thin enamel wire.. barely useful for the 20w claimed power handling. I looked through my box of parts and realized that i had a Farrite 140-43 mix torroid in there , plus some scrap CAT6 cable. 

I would a single pair of cat6 cable internal to the torroid and soldered the wires to the plugs that came with the balun.

 
It now happily transmits @ 100w on 80m - 6m bands (with a tuner) All in all cost me $30!

Well worth the upgrade. 

VK5DR