I found this same situation when I went to get on low band after 40 years
away from it.

I found that what sounded like natural background noise was not natural.

With a suggestion from a ham in Wisconsin, I found several insulators on
power poles near my home arcing. You can find these poles with a simple
battery powered am radio. Go back at night after you find a noisy one and
use binoculars to see the actual arcing. Now you can call the power company
and point out the bad insulator. This worked for me.

I have a 60 foot random wire antenna and it is very quiet now. Putting up a
loop will not fix the noisy insulators.
BTW these insualtors arc more in damp weather than when it is dry.

Michael


"Bill Ogden" wrote in message
...
For the first time in many years I have been listening a lot on the low
bands (160/80/40). It seems there is much more background noise than when
I
was in my teens, but that may be my selective memory at work. I am in the
far suburbs trying to use a half-sloper and an inverted V -- both with the
peak at about 53 feet. I think most of the noise is "natural" (except for
a
15Khz harmonic every now and then.)

I started reading about small loops for receiving on 160 and 80. In
particular I have been reading about:

(1) the 4-turn loop on 4-foot cross arms (W1FB),
(2) the 4-turn coax loop (in a 9-inch diameter) (W1FB),
(3) an 18-inch ferrite rod unit described by G2BZQ

All of these were described as better receiving antennas "in the house"
than
the authors' more conventional outside antennas. W1FB thought the 9-inch
loop was better than the 4-foot unshielded loop and apparently did not
think
much of ferrite-stick antennas.

What is the experience of those on this newsgroup? Are these antennas
really better (in the house, and even in the basement) than conventional
outdoor antennas? Are they significantly better when used outside and
perhaps elevated a bit? I realize they are inconvenient because they must
be tuned even for small frequency changes. It seems they are very
directional for nulls but fairly broad for other responses. Is the same
loop
good for 160 and 80 (and maybe even 40)?

Bill
W2WO