Re: LF: Ferrite RX antennas

[Daniele Tincani <danieletincani@yahoo.com>]

Hi Roelof,

 

I fully agree with you. In fact, I intended to expose only my very personal case (and referred to the so-called MaxiWhip just as another possible LF rx antenna that I had read about recently). It took a long time for me to come to a "realistic" identification of my particular requirements (taking into account the desired band, my technical skills, room restrictions, budget limits, "social" constraints and family-internal mandatory regulations :-)). After that, I decided to go with loops. I did actually performed some tests with active E-probes, but they gave poor results. This was expected, given the position of E-probes during tests, just a couple of meters far from walls, on top of a wooden pole out of my balcony at 5th floor. A better position could have been on the roof, but before to try that I made other tests on the balcony with the M0AYF loop amplifier (with Steve Ratzlaff mods) and found them satisfactory enough, so I decided to go with this solution (for now, of course :-)). Anyway, my personal experience is that in a restricted-room, quasi-indoor application, it is quite hard to get an active E-probe working properly. Under the same conditions, an active (wideband) or tuned loop is a more manageable choice in my humble opinion.

 

Best regards

Daniele

From: Roelof Bakker <roelof@ndb.demon.nl>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 9:03 PM
Subject: Re: LF: Ferrite RX antennas

Hello Daniele,

Just consider this.
The now decommissioned NDB IPA-280, location Easter Island in the Pacific, distance 13000 km, has been received in Europe by only three listeners. The first was Vincent Lecler from France, who used a beverage on ground for antenna. The second was Hartmut Wolf from Germany, using a K9AY. The third person was yours truly, who used a mini-whip and the station identification was acquired by aural copy of the CW ID.

This shows that very different kind of antennas can provide excellent results.
The point is, what kind of antenna is the most suitable for your location?
Loops are excellent, but still worthless at my home location, due to a radiating underground cable TV distribution cable.

There is more to reception antennas than a simple A versus B test!

Best regards,
Roelof, pa0rdt