Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: Palomar Engineers CB-4-1500AT

Category: Antenna parts, accessories, incl. baluns, hardware, etc.

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : Palomar Engineers CB-4-1500AT
Reviews: 4MSRP: 85
Description:
4:1 Ladder line/tuner balun, 1.8-31 MHz, 1500W PEP
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.palomar-engineers.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1241.5
N9SD Rating: 2023-04-01
Mine seems to work perfectly Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Ok, so a couple of weeks later...

Yup, I am now experiencing exactly the same as the other posters/reviewers. Running only about 300W, after a few minutes on FT8, the SWR starts creeping up.

Not good. Going to contact Palomar to see what they can do.

ORIGNAL REVIEW BELOW:
I can’t understand the other comments here. I bought one of thee at HRO last month to test out a 500W amplifier. I have had absolutely no problems with it. Running at the 500W level running nets on and around 7MHz, including 100% duty cycle digital modes, SWR has been perfectly stable. So I’m not sure what’s up with the other reviewers scenarios, but my experience so far has been perfect.

I just took measurements this morning at the input to the balun, and SWRs across the HAM spectrum were consistently under 2.7, sometimes way down to 1.0. This allows my tuner to find a good match with very little feedline loss. For reasons I cannot change, I have about 100’ of RG8x going from my tuner to the balun, then window line up the the center of my doublet.

Works great.
N4NUI Rating: 2020-07-30
Bad CB-4-1500ts Palomar Balun Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
ON 16 July 2020, I bought the CB-4-1500ts through HRO to use with an additional doublet fed with 450 ohm DX engineering window line. I have another doublet with an older COMEX 4:1 balun and have had no problems. This new 40m doublet and the feed line are the correct lengths and orientation to avoid problems. This, supposedly, 1500 watt Palomar balun saturates and heats at even 200 watts using the FT-8 duty cycle and it saturates as fast with SSB. A friend brought over a different brand of balun with similar ratings and there was no problem at 200 watts. Also, the Palomar advertisement for this says there is a rf isolated grounding lug on the case and there is none. I wonder if there is a manufacturing problem or they received a bunch of ferrite cores with the wrong mix from their supplier. HRO Denver said they would followup with Palomar. Nothing has been heard as yet.
K4QET Rating: 2016-10-18
Heats up too fast Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I've had the Palomar CB-4-1500OCF for a year or so; it works fine at 100w on my 160m OCFD.

But, when using more than 100w, for sure 500 watts CW, after 15 min or so of a slow speed CW QSO, SWR shoots up to infinity. Same thing with for example 30 seconds of CW key down at 7 00 watts.

This is on an antenna which is SWR 1.4 without a tuner at operating frequency.
AB1MX Rating: 2016-07-30
overheated Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Bought to handle my "new" SB-200 linear's power. One night I was net control and my VSWR went sky high after ~15 minutes. The balun overheated. My power was ~ 500W PEP since it's a SB-200, so I wasn't close to the rating of 1500W PEP. The antenna is a doublet to ladder line multi band, cut to 160 and I was on 75. Perhaps the VSWR was really awful at ~3800, but a useful balun should be power rated at real world VSWRs, not in the lab. Just purchased something from the competition with better ratings. It's a 1 because the box and hardware are really nice for re-use.