YouLoop - is it worth buying?

[ka3jjz]

If you have done any digging on YouTube lately you will no doubt see many videos that have recently come out on the YouLoop. You can buy one here.....

YouLoop HF loop antenna – Airspy.US

v3.airspy.us

Or if you have a good stocked junk box you can build one with the info linked here

Loops - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

This is a passive loop- meaning it has no amplifier. It's really intended for SDRs with hot front ends, It would fail miserably for portables and desktop radios without some amplification (note that I recall some desktops have a built in amp which you can switch in). If you need something that doesn't take up a lot of space in your shack and you're willing to experiment, this is a cheap way to go.

Mike

 

[dlwtrunked]

First off, the eBay one is slightly different than the one sold by Airspy and AirspyUS. I have both. The 2 black boxes are different in each model with the Airspy (non-eBay) working slightly better on lowest frequencies. These are only good as someone says with receivers with higher than normal gain. With that being said, I only recommend one if you are using an Airspy HF+ Discovery and then it is excellent. Otherwise, you might be wasting you money. Note most (all?) of the loops in the wiki are not of the same Moebius design which has benefits. Mound the loop on thin wooden pieces bought at Lowes or Home Depot (rather than nails, I drilled holes and used pull ties to fasten the two sticks together).

 

[Benkasey]

I use it with the RTL-SDR Blog V4 dongle. It works decently enough. I hang it over a closet door. Does well on 2 meter ham. Picked up SW broadcasts from that big Florida station, Radio Marti, Radio New Zealand, Radio Nikkei, CHU Canada. Listen a few times a month.

 

[BinaryMode]

Anyone have experience with this loop and a RTL-SDR v.3?

 

[dlwtrunked]

Anyone have experience with this loop and a RTL-SDR v.3?

Per my post, is going to work poor for that.

 

[ka3jjz]

If you have the parts to build it, you can decide this for yourself and you won't damage your wallet at all. There's even a Greyhat mod that supposedly makes it work better on the lower bands (The instructions are all in the wiki)

Mike

 

[BinaryMode]

Per my post, is going to work poor for that.

Yes, you said higher than normal gain. The RTL-SDR v.3's gain can be adjusted in SDR# et al. Is that not good enough or would an LNA be needed?

If you have the parts to build it, you can decide this for yourself and you won't damage your wallet at all. There's even a Greyhat mod that supposedly makes it work better on the lower bands (The instructions are all in the wiki)

Mike

Yeah, I looked at the Wiki and determined I'd rather just buy it since I don't have all the parts. Tools, yes, not the parts. By the time I bought it all off eBay (where I get a lot of my connectors and whatnot) I'm probably better off just buying it out right.

 

[13dka]

I think it is important to understand when and why to use a shielded loop in first place: That is not to say I understood how they work but I imagine it's simply when the symmetry, radiation pattern and H-field sensitivity of an unshielded loop are not enough to deal with nearfield noise so you have to "shield" (attenuate) the E-field on top?

In other words, you use them when the local noise you have to deal with leaves you no better option, and then it doesn't matter that this makes a very lossy antenna type (SML) even more lossy - the noise would render more sensitivity useless. And it works: In my personal, uncalibrated experience there was actually a noticable difference in SNR between a regular, unshielded active SML and a YouLoop plus preamp... at the position it was tried, and that's the point: Putting both antennas out of the miserable noise, the regular SML wins in most if not all olympic radio sports disciplines against the YouLoop. But then again, if you're away from the the local noise there's maybe not many reasons left to use an SML in first place, from a performance POV.

All this being said, it should be noted that the YouLoop is special in that it uses that "Moebius loop" trick to make it a 2-turn loop, which is mitigating the losses on low frequencies (and making them worse on high frequencies, hence the modifications to reconfigure the loop). I find it a pretty good performer on MW/LW even without a preamp, but only if the radio has the surplus sensitivity to make that happen. I allows for some, sometimes almost average listening on LW through 10MHz, where a whip would pick up only noise.

 

[dlwtrunked]

Yes, you said higher than normal gain. The RTL-SDR v.3's gain can be adjusted in SDR# et al. Is that not good enough or would an LNA be needed?

The Airspy HF+Discovery does not need a preamp. I have no experience with adding an LNA to the RTL-SDR.

 

[sunwave]

LNA's aren't that great for shortwave reception.

My experience using a RTL-SDR Blog V4 with bias-T power to Nooelec LNA's.

Noise floor went up 20dbm. Imaging was worse. I had to lower RF Gain quite low to get rid of some of the imaging but still plenty of imaging from strong broadcasters.

My cure. I put it on the shelf. Now I only use SDRPlay RSP1b. No issues with imaging. Enjoying good reception.

It helps to know RTL-SDR's aren't designed for radio reception. They were meant for DAB+ TV channels. The tuner chips are the thing that a coder discovered it can actually tune 25MHz-1.711GHz with a custom driver. I think this was back in 2012?