It followed me home....

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majoco

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I took my Kenwood R2000 which will run on 12v from the car battery, a couple of dozen garden canes, a long earth spike and about 600ft of telephone wire out to a nearby swamp some time ago. Laid out the wire then tied it to the top of the canes, fired up the radio ....and....and.... ten or more electric fence units from the cattle farms surrounding me! The noise blanker cut it back a bit and I could definitely hear some Australian BC bands stations but the noise from the fencers was too much!

Before I moved here to this valley I lived on a hill which sloped down towards the coast about 20miles away facing Australia - my best NDB was Port McQuarie PMQ on 395kHz on the other side of the Tasman - 2300km, say 1400miles.
 

majoco

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Joined
Dec 25, 2008
Messages
4,315
Location
New Zealand
Finally got the new toy going properly with the fitting of the memory 'keep-alive' batteries. Here it is receiving my local 'oldies' station on 1548kHz without an antenna!
The Mk1 of the 25-turn loop works quite well with a 3-gang tuning capacitor found in the bottomless junk box, but the loop needs much more inductance - it measures 540uH and the capacitor is 1125pF. At the moment it tunes from the top end of the broadcast band down to about 220kHz with all three gangs connected - I would like it to go down to 50kHz which is many more turns!
The frame of the antenna is from some re-purposed Kwila Fijiian hardwood from a broken barbecue table umbrella - it's very hard! Fortunately I have a good drill press!
 
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