The Ugly Balun: Why Are We Still Doing This?
The Ugly Balun: Why Are We Still Doing This?
If you’ve ever seen a 10-meter length of coax tortured into submission around a paint bucket and proudly labeled a “balun,” congratulations — you’ve met the infamous Ugly Balun. It’s ugly by name, ugly by physics, and ugly by the way it still haunts ham radio today.
Yes, this really is what hams once proudly called a “balun.”
A Relic of Desperation
Back in the Stone Age of ham radio, ferrite was exotic and expensive. So operators did what hams do best: they improvised. Winding coax into a big lumpy coil was better than nothing, and “nothing” was the actual alternative. In that context, the ugly balun was clever. In 2025? It’s like driving a horse-drawn carriage down the highway and calling it fuel efficient.
What’s Wrong With the Ugly Balun?
- Narrowband at best: The choke only works on one “sweet spot” frequency. Everywhere else? It’s decorative cable art.
- Weather roulette: Rain, snow, humidity — all happily detune your painstaking coil. Congratulations, you just built a weather sensor, not a balun.
- Low rejection: If 5–10 dB of common-mode suppression excites you, you probably also collect bottle caps and call it currency.
- Coax torture: Tight bends and UV exposure slowly strangle your feedline. Nothing says “reliability” like coax rot.
- Installation comedy: Nothing impresses your neighbors more than a giant PVC pipe hanging off your antenna like a failed plumbing experiment.
| Criterion | Ugly Balun (bucket coil) | Ferrite 1:1 Current Choke / Line Isolator |
|---|---|---|
| Common-Mode Rejection | ~5–15 dB (if you hit the resonance) | ~30–45 dB across HF (proper mix, turns) |
| Bandwidth | Narrow; one sweet spot, lots of sour ones | Broad; multi-band coverage |
| Weather Stability | Detunes with rain/humidity (good luck) | Stable in sealed enclosure |
| Size & Weight | Bulky, heavy, awkward | Compact, light, easy to mount |
| Cable Stress | Tight bends & UV → early retirement | Gentle geometry; cable lives longer |
| Installation | DIY plumbing cosplay | Two connectors. Done. |
Indicative values — exact rejection depends on implementation, ferrite mix, and turns. Still, the gap isn’t a gap; it’s a canyon.
The Modern Alternative
Meanwhile, the rest of the world discovered ferrite. A single compact 1:1 current choke on a proper mix core delivers 30–45 dB rejection across HF, in a weatherproof, lightweight package. It doesn’t sag, detune, or look like a child’s arts-and-crafts project gone wrong. If you’re still winding buckets of coax in 2025, you might also be microwaving your dinner with a kerosene lantern.
Conclusion: Retire the Dinosaur
The ugly balun deserves respect for what it was: a desperate hack from a time when ferrite wasn’t on every shelf. But today? There’s simply no excuse. Unless your goal is to impress your club buddies with how much coax you can waste on a bucket, do yourself and your signal a favor — leave the ugly balun in the museum where it belongs.
Mini-FAQ: Ugly Baluns
- Do ugly baluns work? — Sort of. On one frequency, maybe. Everywhere else, not really.
- How much common-mode do they choke? — Typically 5–15 dB. Modern ferrite chokes give 30–45 dB.
- Why are they “ugly”? — Because they look like cable vomit wrapped around plumbing parts — and perform about as well.
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