| Author |
Message |
    
Mikefromms
Intermediate Member
Username: Mikefromms
Post Number: 361
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 8:44 pm: | 
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I wish I had known about loops before now. I constructed (very easy) and installed (a little more difficult) a 264ft long wire loop. I used 14 gage stranded electrical wire. I soldered RG 8x coax to the loop about a 70ft run. The highest point for the loop is around 27ft; the lowest about 15ft. I did the best I could to leave as much open space in the middle of the loop. A circle is ideal but I used trees and just threw the wire over using a half of a brick with a hole in it to get the wire up in the trees. It was a long process measuring and pulling wire but the results I'm getting with this very imperfectly installed loop is incredible! Nothing is even on this thing. The height is different at various points, the wire is laying on the limbs and the shape is perhaps an oblong circle. I'm now on the air using my Kenwood TS850 with the internal tuner. I'd like to put up a 10 and 11 meter vertical loop. This project would seem easy compared to the 264ft long horizonal loop I put up yesterday. I'm sold on these antennas. They are pretty cheap to build. Try one.
mikefromms |
That ELCO Guy (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:00 pm: |
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@Mike
The large loop antenna you described is a horizontal loop antenna when installed as you have described. The antenna you described is designed to operate in the 80, 40, 20, and 10 meter bands. As you noted you do have to use a tuner though.
The 10 meter band is very close to the CB band and as such with a tuner it can be used in the CB Band.
The radiation patter is broadside to the antenna, looking thru the hole going in both directions. Your radioation pattern will be vertical orientated--strate up. You have just made a cloud warmer. The signal will go strate up, bounce off the atmospnere and come down back to earth--like the reflector of a flashlingt.
If placed in a vertical position the antenna will transmit in a broadside radiation pattern in equal and opposite directions--think a PDLII without a reflector.
The orientation will be the opposite half of the loop that you use for a feedpoint. Fed on the bottom it will be horizontal. Fed on the side the antenna will be vertical.
Good luck and enjoy the loops.
That ELCO Guy |
Mikefromms
Intermediate Member
Username: Mikefromms
Post Number: 362
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 5:59 pm: |
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The cloudwarmer is doing its thing. I can hear and talk on it like it's a big groundplane. I'd like to put up a cb vertical loop.
mikefromms |
Straycat
Member
Username: Straycat
Post Number: 59
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 9:20 pm: |
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If the loop is less than a full wave length off of the ground for the operating freq it's omni directional. I have the same type of loop on my backyard fence. It's resonant on 40 and 11 meters (no tuner needed). Being about 7 times the length of a 11 meter loop it generates BIG gain and kicks tail. Mine is also 14G wire but fed driectly from the back of a tuner that I have to use to work the other bands. I live in a restricted area and the antenna is invisible to the neighbors. |
Mikefromms
Intermediate Member
Username: Mikefromms
Post Number: 365
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 6:04 pm: |
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Does yours work on skip in 11 meters? Since it is a cloudwarmer, how does it respond on 11 meters?
mikefromms |
Straycat
Member
Username: Straycat
Post Number: 60
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 9:23 pm: |
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That's basically all it does. I run barefoot because if I don't I set off the neighbor's burglar alarms (they don't have a clue). I can hear the rock buckets that drive around here all day but they can barely here me since I'm flat side and they are vertical. Skip is first nature. When skip is rolling in I can talk to anyone I hear and they always tell me I'm booming. For vertical work I use a coaxial vetical hung from the ceiling here on the second floor of the house. I also skip with that on one a regular basis barefoot. |
