Horizontal indoor loop antenna v. 1.0

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KB2GOM

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I have a problem: when my radio room was in the front of the house (on the east side), it was easy to run a feedline to a large RF-hungry SWL dipole with various stubs and feeders.

Now, however, with my "shack" moved to the SW corner of the house, any attempt to mount an outdoor antenna of any significant length raises potential safety issues because of nearby electrical lines.
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Monitoring VHF/UHF is no big deal because of high-performance scanner antennas. HF, however, presents challenges. My main receiver is a Satellit 800, which has the guts of a Drake R8 but also has a large telescoping vertical antenna. It works okay, but I wanted more signal.

I've been looking at small loops and got some great recommendations on another thread, but then I had a thought: what if I turned the 8' x 12' room into a giant horizontal passive horizontal loop?

So I called a ham friend and ran the idea by him. Sure, he said, give it a try. He gave me 25 feet of 4-conductor phone wire. The better half helped me to strip it. I ran a single strand -- about 50 feet long -- around the perimeter and hooked the ends to the clip-in terminals on the back of the Satellit 800.

There's a switch on the back of the 800 that allows me to quickly compare the loop with the radio's built-in vertical antenna. And . . . it works! It pulls in more signal than the vertical, but there is not noticeably less noise on the higher bands -- 15 megs and above.

Tomorrow, I'll be checking the lower bands early, but so far, so good.
 

ka3jjz

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Depending on your budget, you could even use a W6LVP indoors, especially if you have an attic you can use. If there's enough room, you could even put an el-cheapo rotator on it. Or this - he's got an experimenter's kit that might give you a little more flexibility in what you use for the loop element and mounting...



And for a passive loop, this works OK - as it's tuned, it may work somewhat better than the random wire loop you have...


Mike
 

merlin

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My landlord is OK with my discone just above the roof, no way I can string up dipoles.
Beams on towers, not a chance.
I am going to 'Sneak' a folded dipole at the perimeter of the roof. It is broadband mainly for HF/LF.
A buddy SWL showed me this. Good for transmitting with a balun and terminator to handle the power.
 

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KB2GOM

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Rensselaer County New York
Additional: the "horizontal room loop" appears to work well on below 10 mHz.

The wire -- roughly 50 feet from end to end -- goes around the perimeter of the room near the ceiling -- taped to the top of window frames and hidden on the top shelves of bookcases, so the height above the floor is about 7 feet, and the room itself is on the first floor.

In all, I am pleased with the results.

For anyone who wants squeeze more performance out of their shortwave receiver, I can recommend trying the horizontal room loop. It's not expensive; it's relatively easy to do (and undo if you don't like the results), and just might improve your shortwave reception.

I don't claim that this is the "ultimate" SWL DX antenna, but it certainly improved my situation. Perhaps others have suggestions for improving it.
 
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