Sky Wire performance TX/RX vs the antenna modeling programs

[jjisella]

3 years ago I put up a 600 ft horizontal loop up 53 ft for ham use. It's fed with ladder line to a 4:1 balun, then 4 feet of coax to 100w Icom rig with a Mat tuner. I never even cut it to resonance. I've run the simple model with EZNEC for 20m, indicates lobes are at quite a high angle. Not impressive as a DX antenna. In practice it's an awesome DX antenna. I'll spare the observations from pileup's and other circumstances where the performance of this loop has clearly been a lot better than the models predict. You can read in many places how people repeatedly say the same thing. Naturally everyone wants to think their antenna is a great performer... But after many contacts over 3 years I can honestly say this antenna is a superb DX performer. Has any else had similar experience and what opinions are out there of actual performance vs model predicted performance. 73 John K1KSC

 

[devicelab]

Do the numbers/plots match in MMANA-GAL? MMANA-GAL basic

It's a bit easier to use than EZNEC.

 

[devicelab]

Do the numbers/plots match in MMANA-GAL? MMANA-GAL basic

It's a bit easier to use than EZNEC.

I punched a simple 50m square loop in up at ~50ft or so and it's going to act more like a yagi. So it'll be directional pointing forward of the feedpoint. The 'optimum' DX angle is 5 deg (so the experts say) and the square loop is more like 10-15 deg (with those numbers.)

If you feed it at the corner, then it'll be direction in the same manner.