KB2GOM
Active Member
Somewhere here on RR, I read that somebody had really good luck with a 45-foot long wire with a 9:1 balun for shortwave listening. So why not a 9:1s balun on the horizontal room loop (a 50-foot wire running around near the ceiling of my radio shack and feeding my Grundig Satellit 800) and feed it to the coax connector on the back?
So I tried it. Results: not one speck of improvement; it didn't improve the noise floor; nothing.
Ok, let's try running 50 feet of wire outside, along the edge of the house and the deck and bring it into the Satellit through the balun and coax setup. The result: Not one iota of improvement over the horizontal room loop.
Saw some David Casler YouTube videos comparing magnetic loop antennas with a vertical; some noise improvement, but not so dramatic that it made me want to reach for my wallet.
Bottom line: I don't think I am going to get a serious improvement in HF antenna performance (listening) until I can manage to get a 100 wire up high, and that will require a long run of coax to get to it.
Meantime, the horizontal room loop works pretty well, certainly better than the whip antenna on the Satellit 800.
So I tried it. Results: not one speck of improvement; it didn't improve the noise floor; nothing.
Ok, let's try running 50 feet of wire outside, along the edge of the house and the deck and bring it into the Satellit through the balun and coax setup. The result: Not one iota of improvement over the horizontal room loop.
Saw some David Casler YouTube videos comparing magnetic loop antennas with a vertical; some noise improvement, but not so dramatic that it made me want to reach for my wallet.
Bottom line: I don't think I am going to get a serious improvement in HF antenna performance (listening) until I can manage to get a 100 wire up high, and that will require a long run of coax to get to it.
Meantime, the horizontal room loop works pretty well, certainly better than the whip antenna on the Satellit 800.