Ladder Line baluns are used to match the impedance seen at the end of the ladder line to a coaxial cable, usually 50 ohms, but a ladder line balun can also be used to match to 75 ohm coax like RG-6/U used for cable and satellite installations. While RG-6 doesn’t have the same power rating as larger cable, it is very useful for beverage antennas or receiving antennas which don’t carry a lot of power. The impedance seen at the end of the ladder line will not be the same as the characteristic impedance of the ladder line (typically 300 or 450 ohms). Good ladder line antenna designs try to have the impedance at the end of the ladder line attachment to the balun close to 200 ohms so that a 4:1 balun can be used to match to 50 ohm coax. A typical ladder line antenna is shown in the picture below: Palomar Engineers has ladder line to coax 4:1 baluns in both kit form and also assembled in a variety of 1 watt to 10KW power levels to suit the needs of many customers. The ladder line baluns are designed for balanced output and are generally used at the end of a run of ladder line from the antenna. The baluns connect to the ladder line and then transition to coax cable to you antenna tuner or radio station.Ladder Line to coax transformers
For RFI common mode suppression use, mix 31 is effective from 1-300 Mhz, mix 43 works from 25-300 Mhz, Mix 61 is for 200-2000 Mhz, and mix 77 favors .1-50 MHz. These frequencies are those of the interfering signal to be eliminated, not the operating frequencies of the equipment to be protected. See Mix Selection for other applications.
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Bead dimensions are shown in the picture below and in the table as A, B, C
Ferrite Bead Dimensions
Application Note: Use impedances for each bead at your desired frequency to select number of beads needed for desired Z. For example if you have a 50 ohm RG-8 coax cable and want a choking impedance of 500 ohms at 10 Mhz, you can check the FB102 column (since FB102 will pass RG-8 through its center ID) at 10Mhz and find that Mix 31 has a Z of 108 ohms/bead and Mix 43 has a Z of 91 ohms/bead. For 500 ohms we would need 5 mix 31 beads or 6 mix 43 beads to have greater than 500 ohms. Mix 31 has better response below 10 Mhz but above 10 Mhz mix 31 and mix 43 are very close. If you need more Z, just use more beads in series on the cable or use more windings thru a larger ID bead (e.g. USE FB102-31 for 4 turns of RG-8X for 16X increase in Z per bead – see pictures below for examples). Use Mix 61 for VHF and above for RFI/EMI suppression and below 30 Mhz for multi-ratio impedance transformers (baluns/ununs). See Mix Selection for other applications.
For extra large cables use the FB400-31 which has an inside diameter of 3 inches (76mm).
Frequency Range Comparison Chart
(FB56-xx size)
Multi-turn Common Mode Choking Impedance Increase Example (FB56-43)
Ferrite Bead relative size comparison
Left to right sizes: FB56 (ID = .25″), FB102 (ID=.505″), FB103 (ID=.77″)
SLIP ON Sizes for Heliax and Coax Cable
Cascaded Common Mode Chokes/Line Isolators/1:1 Baluns
 RG58 4 turns on 2 FB102-31 for 2000 ohms choking impedance |
 RG58 12 turns on FT240-43 for 4000-6000 ohms choking impedance |
Handy Wire Size reference for ferrite bead sizes needed
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Connector already on cable? See Snap On Ferrite Beads for convenient installation on cables with connector already installed.