Artisan · Hand-Made · Custom-Made · 500 W · 160 Through 10 Meters
The Artisan Choke — Hand-Made, Custom-Made, Every Band 160 Through 10.
Coax wound through ferrite by hand, the approach Jim Brown, K9YC, turned into a cookbook: turns multiply, so a wound choke puts far more choking on the outside of the shield than beads alone. Every one is custom-made, built by hand one at a time, and tested before it ships. It's large. It's beautifully made. And it works on every band a Greyline covers from 160 to 10.
Hand-made means patience. Each one is built by hand, and at times there will be a backlog. Your order holds your place in line.
Where It Goes on a Greyline
At the antenna end of the coax, to keep RF off the coax running back to the shack. Tuner in the shack: at the feedpoint, where the coax connects at the base of the pole. Remote tuner at the feedpoint: on the radio side of the tuner, between the tuner and the coax. Same job.
Want the quietest receive? Add a second at the radio end of the coax, to lower the noise the coax picks up on its way back to the shack.
Two Versions
• 500 W, two cores — this one, $119. The one most stations want: every barefoot radio, most amplifiers run conservatively, and FT8 at 500 to 600 watts without the SWR moving.
• High Power 1.5 kW, three cores, $159. For legal-limit stations, rated for CW and SSB. See the High Power Artisan Choke →
Measured on Our Bench
We put an all-band unit on the network analyzer. Common-mode rejection: 38.6 dB at 1 MHz, 27.8 dB at 10 MHz, 12.9 dB at 28 MHz.
In plain terms: at 1 MHz, just below the 160-meter band, it cuts the unwanted current on the outside of the coax about 85 times; at 10 MHz, on 30 meters, about 25 times; at 28 MHz, on 10 meters, about 4 times. Strongest down low, and still working at the top of the HF dial. One choke for the whole station.
What Artisan Means Here
Coax, not wire. Many production chokes are wound with two-wire (bifilar) line, and if the turns aren't evenly spaced, the capacitance between them works against the choke. Coax holds its spacing. Each one is wound by hand with RG400, Teflon-insulated, which takes far more heat than foam-insulated coax.
Ferrite chosen for the job. Not just the standard mix: the ferrite is selected for the most series resistance, the part of a choke that actually absorbs the unwanted current.
Room to breathe. More power calls for more cores, and the waterproof box leaves air around them so heat has somewhere to go.
Every one tested. Each choke is bench-tested into a 50-ohm load before it ships. Not mass-produced, and never shipped untested.
Custom-made for your station. Need a different connector or something special for your setup? Say so in the order notes and it's built that way.
Connectors
SO-239 on both ends, in a waterproof box. At the base of a Greyline, the ladder-line adapter's PL-259 plugs into one side and your coax into the other: no barrels, no extra joints.
How you'll know it's working: if your signal was showing up on the TV, the computer or the speakers, that should stop, and the noise floor on receive should come down. Beads or wound? The two kinds →
Ham Radio is fun again! Pass it on… 73, Jon KL2A · Greyline Performance · 435-200-4902
Hand-made · WA1BXY