New LBA Lighting Choke Feeds Tower Strobe Lights

Providing an AC feed to strobe lighting systems on high power AM towers can be problematical. The ring-type chokes often used for tower light feeds on high voltage towers often do not function well under the low pulse loads of stroboscopic lighting systems. These problems can cause overheating and burn out of seemingly adequately rated ring transformers!

Traditional lighting chokes, such as the LBA TC-300, typically do not have a sufficiently high RF voltage rating to be an alternate to ring transformers at RF voltages encountered at 50,000 watts and above.

To solve these problems, LBA developed the BALC-20 lighting choke specifically for the low power drain, peak pulse needs of tower mounted strobe light systems. Rated at 30 KV peak RF, it is particularly suited for broadcast systems of 50KW and above. It provides a three wire 110/230 volt AC feed at a nominal maximum 1000 V/A.

The photo shows a typical installation of the BALC-20 in a 747 kHz 100,000 watt antenna tuning unit. It is powering a Flash Technology strobe system on a 400 foot tower. The BALC-20 is withstanding a peak RF base voltage at 125% modulation of about 22 KV!

More about the LBA RF & lighting choke line can be found at LBA’s RF lighting and chokes page.