Thanks Mal - you can stick with your verticals up there and if I had the environment Id be running them too -  but well the loop really is the only operable, effective and relatively safe  solution here in the Birch and Spruce forests (if youve seen the (very odd and not Wolf friendly) film "the Grey" - youll know the type of forest this is. Or take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2kXezEIIQo  which the planes fly over my place at less than 200ft -  you can see the tree issue
 
The big loop which is "pointing" towards Eu and ZL (sorry Americas) is just slightly worse s/n than the K9AY (0.5db) and about 1dB poorer than the  L400B probe on rx - all to do with power lines and local line noise plus what every our friends up the road at HAARP are frying tonight. The probe is effectively up 60ft on a frozen Spruce over a now frozen no so freshwater  lake.
 
The Ashlock loop is very benign and behaves itself and doesnt need a radial system and physically is self tensioning - its tuning is very sharp - if you tune across resonance with the rx on SSB it sounds like a 1.5KHz bandpass filter with the low and high end frequencies roll-in and outs' - Tells me its working pretty well and reasonable Q - of course the Decca really helps as its basically self protecting on fault conditions - a saving grace.
 
Laurence