Frnak McKenney wrote:

If I'm following the ARRL handbook correctly, I want the elements
laid out _across_ the incoming wavefront. For Fort Collins to
Richmond, that is, going west to east, that would mean I'd want to
string the wires/elements north-south. Naturally (per Murphy, the
patron saint of Data Processing) my house is oriented E-W. Which
does still, as you point out, leave the possibility of building
something outdoors.

You're following it correctly only if you're using elements which are no
longer than about 5/4 wavelength. The direction of maximum gain isn't
longer perpendicular to the wire if the wire is longer. This is covered
very will in the _Antenna Book_.

Still, my current indoor loop seems to be picking up a nice strong
signal. It was upright when I first started testing, but it wound up
being laid flat at some point in the past few days -- about the time
I discovered that I had been mis-tuining it. Wonder which had more
effect: my changes, or atmospherics? grin!

As I mentioned in my other recent posting, there's no way for you to tell.

Anyway, thank you for your time and suggestions. I did some looking
around on the 'web for introductory material to help me understand
the ARRL Antenna Handbook and stumbled onto these:

Antenna Newcomers and the Language of Antennas
http://www.cebik.com/tales/nc.html

Antennas from the Ground Up
http://www.cebik.com/gup/groundup.html

Some really nice propagation plots. Now, if there were just some
simple way of figuring out which way the antenna is oriented
relative to the plots... "It's an imperfect universe" grin!

You can duplicate the plots for the kinds of simple antennas you're
dealing with, with the free demo version of EZNEC available from
http://eznec.com. In the View Antenna display, select View/Objects, then
check the "2D Display" box. Then you'll see a 2D plot superimposed on
the view of the antenna, to show how the two are related. When viewing a
3D plot, the View Antenna display rotates along with the 3D pattern, so
you can see how they're related if you keep both windows open.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL