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Reviews For: Radio Works

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

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Review Summary For : Radio Works
Reviews: 21MSRP: 49.00
Description:
4:1 Remote balun
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.radioworks.com/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00212.5
W4YHD Rating: 2002-10-10
B1-5K Plus is an Excellent Balun! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have used the Radio Works B1-4K and B1-5K Plus Baluns for several years now and they are very well engineered and very well made. The current Baluns are rugged and effective designs, and Radio Works has designed a very high quality current Balun line with some very important features. First, the wire used to wind the internal Balun transmission line is brought right out for direct connection to the wire elements thus eliminating any possibility of loose hardware connections. This is very important, as compared to the typical designs from Unadilla and others that depend on hardware and internal/external ring terminals compressed at the eyelet nuts on the plastic case to make this connection. Plastic in compression "cold flows" over time and these connections inevitably get loose and noisy. The Radio Works design also fills the balun interior with an expanding foam to prevent moisture ingress and rattles. Unusually large ferrite is used to prevent saturation. The overall quality of the Radio Works baluns is superior to the others in my opinion, and build quality is high and consistent. The measured technical data presented by Radio Works shows that Engineering was seriously done here and they are not afraid to show it. It is impossible to find equivalent data presented for the other popular Baluns, which surely raises suspicions.

Jim at Radio Works has provided a very nice line of well engineered, high quality, and affordable current Baluns for the amateur service. I recommend the B1-5K Plus model which will easily handle anything you can throw at it, and then some. For a few bucks more you can have the best! Go for it!
VE3YF Rating: 2002-10-05
B1-5k Plus Current Balun Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have been using the Radio Works B1-5k+ Baluns on my 2 wire antennae for about 2 years now. I haven't experienced any problems. As one previous person mentioned, I too was worried about the drain holes and the fact that Radio Works recommended to plug them. I thought the method of having a couple of leads coming out the side was a bit flimsey, should have been of a heavier guage, but in two + years not a failure yet.
K1FDH Rating: 2002-05-18
Line Isolator Baluns great Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
W4THU's 'Line Isolator' baluns solved my stray RF problems in my motorhome. I am using a trusty ole Hustler mobile whip, but the fiberglass motorhome does not provide a ground plane. Jim's Line Isolator at the feed point got rid of stray RF that was propogating down the shield and hitting my rig...causing my TS-140 to output only 7 watts!

Now with the Line Isolator and a small MFJ tuner, I can tune across all the bands using the Hustler and get full 100w output.

W4THU's product catalog contains valuable info about grounding, stray RF, etc. His book is also terrific for this same info. A Gotta have resource.

Rudy K1FDH
KZ5X Rating: 2002-04-26
Works the Best Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Had been fighting rf looping problems for months with my multiband loop and ladder feedline to a Jupiter with autotuner. After trying several other highly-touted baluns which are widely advertised and lots of ferrite beads, etc, in desperation I tried first Jim's "Line Isolator" and this made a dramatic improvement. Then added his "Remote Balun" and the problems are 98% gone. This is bulletproof and high-quality equipment head and shoulders above anything else I have seen. You won't be dissapointed.
AA7JC Rating: 2001-05-17
Great Balun Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I picked up a Radio Works 4:1 "remote" current balun at a hamfest and am VERY pleased with its performance.

I tested it with an (AEA CIA) analyzer and found it to be as good as I have ever seen a balun (near perfect infact).

I sawed it in two (gotta see it!) and looked at the dual cores. (As it turned out I was very lucky that I did not damage it when I opened it.)

I now use it for my G5RV and it works great.






N2CU Rating: 2001-04-18
Works well Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Bought two of the 2k baluns for use on dipoles. Well constructed and cost efficient. My only complaint was that after several months useage, both baluns accumulated water inside to the point that they were half full. Had to take them down, drill out drain holes, and dry them out in an oven at low heat. Both had coax seal around the wire holes. The problem is that water gets inaround the eyebolts. I emailed Jim about this and never got a reply. Applying silicone sealer around those areas sealed it up.
N0SP Rating: 2001-04-18
Excellent & Efficient Product Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have two the of Radio Works baluns... The 4:1 Remote Balun as well as the B1-2K. Both have performed flawlessly. There is little I can observe about the B1-2K since it sits up there and does quiet yeoman's duty on the dipoles. However, the exciting product is the Remote Balun. This thing has an SO-239 at the input. It is connected to the back of my antenna tuner with ladder line connected to the output terminals and makes my 80 foot dipole a very efficient antenna on 80 through 10 meters. At first I thought it would be a compromise situation since the antenna was so short on 80 meters and that there would be losses in the balun. This has not been the case! Long QSOs at the 800 watt level on any of the bands has not yielded the slightest warming of the balun and signal reports on the 80' dipole are consistant with those from the full sized dipole I had at another QTH. I also get great signal reports running barefoot. This balun is much larger than any of the "built in" baluns that show up in commercial antenna tuners. If you have one of these tuners I would suggest not using the balanced output, Instead select the coax output of the tuner and connect this Current Balun to it. I would highly recomend this product for a multi-band wire antenna installation. My only recomendation would be to keep the coax between the radio/tuner and the balun fairly short. The balun and ladder line can tolerate very high SWR with almost no loss. The coax, however, becomes quite lossy at an SWR of 10:1 or higher. You could get this kind of mis-match at some combinations of frequency/feedline length/antenna length. I use no coax between the tuner and balun and bring the ladder line in to the shack. I've experienced no RFI problems.
Radio Works has been responsive and easy to deal with. I have two other products from them also, including a line isolator doing duty on an HF-2V rooftop instalation. Radio Works is also very forthcoming and honest in their disclosures, including prodigious warnings about not using these for continous carrier high-power RTTY or AM service. The power ratings published are for SSB and CW. They sell versions rated up to 5 KW SSB that should be used for 1500 watt key-down service. It appears the VK3 that submitted a review below did not read that disclosure and yet saw fit to give it a rating of 1... doesn't seem fair. Their prices are quite reasonable and the catalog they provide is a fun read and quite informative.
Enjoy,
NØSP
KC0W Rating: 2000-11-12
Jury is still out. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had the Radio Works model #T-4G line isolator for the last 3 years. In theory, it's function is to keep RF from traveling on the "outside" of the coax line & send it to ground.

Does it work? I don't know.......How does one judge such a thing? I do get into the VCR if I run more than 100 watts. To be fair to Radio Works, the dipole is only about 25 feet above the TV & VCR.

SWR is OK & the isolator is built out of PVC tubing.
WG7X Rating: 2000-07-07
4 Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I am using this balun togther with the 420 ohm ladder line also purchased from RW. So far, the balun seems to be working FB.

(See my review on the MB-V-A tuner)

All I can say is that the balun makes it very easy to us ladder line and it all seems to be working well for me.

My antenna is a classic 80 meter doublet fed with 100 feet of ladder line, the RV-4 balun, and 50 ft of RG-213.

So far I've worked most every station that I've wanted to, including some good DX. (5I3A)!!

The only possible exception seems to be 20 meters, and that's probably because I'm a QRP
station by 20 meter standards. (Aprox 100 watts)
I'll be getting the killerwatt going later and then we will see if I meet minimum standards for 20... HI!

At any rate, the balun and ladder line seem to work, and Radio Works is a good company.

CUL, Gary
NA7G Rating: 2000-05-15
Radio Works Remote Balun 4 fixed my problem! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Purchased a current balun (4:1) in the hopes of solving a pesky RFI problem in my shack.
My rig is located on an upstairs floor, and grounding is difficult. My 100 w rig, (TS450SAT)
was feeding a tuner to open wire line to an extended double zepp on 40 m. Use of the setup[
on other bands caused bad RFI problems. The current balun solved all problems--it put the
RF into the antenna, instead of the shack. The internal tuner of the rig allows auto tuning of
all ham bands, with no observed RFI on any band. Incidentially, signal reports indicate my
signal improved significantly. Installation was simple--coax from the rig to the Remote Balun
4 (located outside, about 15 feet from the rig), then to the existing open wire line. The outboard
tuner is now in the junk box. Extremely pleased with the balun!