One thing not to get hung up on in antenna testing is the signal
strength IF the antenna is active. With amplification, you can get any
S reading you want. It's not a figure of merit for signal quality.

I made a "form" of sorts where I can easily test out different wire
(i.e. loop) configurations with the Wellbrook ALA 100. If you put too
many turns of wire on the form, there seems to be a resonance. I was
getting a lot of hash around 7Mhz with 24 turns at 8ft per turn.
Cuttting that to 6 turns seems pretty good, but I'm still experimenting
with it.

I use sprinker risers to run the wire over. The type I used has grooves
on it. The grooves holds the wire in place. I can't find a good photo
of it on the net, but the risers are sold by Lowes.




Telamon wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

Yesterday I took down the Wellbrook 330S antenna I've been using. I
wanted to get this little chore out of the way, as I'm moving to a new
home soon and will of course be taking the loop with me. I decided
that, until the move, I'd put my LF Engineering H-800 antenna back into
service.

After doing this and reacquainting myself with the H-800, I think I'm
going to have to do some more careful comparisons between it and the
Wellbrook. The H-800 is surprisingly...I'd even say shockingly...good.
It's markedly better than the Wellbrook below 5 mhz. Maybe this isn't
so surprising, since the 330S isn't optimized for those frequencies.
Still, at some point I'm going to have to do a more careful comparison
of them above 5 mhz....just for the heck of it.. I did notice that
reception of Radio Australia on 9580 khz on the H-800 was better than
I'd heard in a long while.

This confirms my impression that the H-800 is one of the best deals
around on an active antenna, even though it's not particularly "talked
about".

If anyone's compared the H-800 to a McKay-Dymek or Dressler antenna,
I'd like to know the results.

It's harder than you think making antenna comparisons. As an example my
loop antenna generally works better during the dark hours and the folded
dipole works better daytime. It could be due to the reception angle of
the antennas but that is what I have found. Sometimes one antenna just
works better then another depending on conditions and frequency.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California