Building my own balun, part 3: First work on the case / 2018-04-04

The first work on the balun case was placing the SO239 socket. This included drilling a hole in the case of the right size and at the right position. Figuring out where to put it was mostly influenced by the fact that the ferrite core has to be placed inside the case and I wanted the SO239 socket, the ferrite core and the output terminals not all jammed together. So the SO239 socket was not going to be in the center. For this my new caliper was a useful tool and I measured the inside size and the wanted location of the socket. And I figured out I could drill a 16mm hole and the SO239 socket would fit inside while leaving enough room for the mounting flange.

Holes were drilled and things worked out fine, so the SO239 socket is now mounted. After checking the future location I realized I will have to mount the balun with the SO239 socket facing downwards because the antenna cable is quite heavy. This has to be taken into account with the next steps.

Other parts of this project:

• Building my own balun, part 1: idea and parts needed
• Building my own balun, part 2: measuring the 'old' balun
• Building my own balun, part 4: Deciding on where to put dipole ends and finishing it
• Building my own balun, part 5: First tests of the result
• Building my own balun, part 6: Redo and some success: a working antenna again