I only have a technician license at the moment but wanted to try some longer range stuff so I got an HF radio. I’m extremely new to the hobby so I have little idea what I’m doing lol.
Xiegu G90 HF radio Astron power supply EFHW antenna strung around the outside of the house like Christmas lights
Awesome! If you do plan on transmitting (on 10m), I recommend a common-mode choke on the feedline between your radio and the EFHW. All you need is a ferrite toroid and loop the feedline a few times through it. This can prevent RF going into your shack, which is kind of a thing with EFHW antennas. Otherwise EFHWs can work very well. Have fun and enjoy your new radio.
This is a different coil than the UnUn on the antenna?
Edit: for reference this is my antenna: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/PEZ-EF-8010-JRKW
The main job of the unun is to match the impedance of the wire to the 50ohm feedline. You may or may not need a common mode choke to prevent RFI, but I had a lot of RF problems with my 40-10 EFHW. My radio was fine but my computer started to glitch out when was transmitting. That all disappeared once I looped my feedline through some ferrite.
Alright, good to know. Do you have any recommendations for which choke to buy? Or maybe I should make one? I know other people have snapped the small chokes on other problematic devices’ wires that were causing issues. Was thinking of looking at those as they’re cheapest.
Something like a FT240-43 toroid should work for 80m to 10m.
That is to make a common-mode choke on your feedline. You can always try to improve the RFI emissions from devices in your house by snapping on some ferrite on wall warts etc.