On Friday, September 12, 2014 12:28:39 AM UTC-5, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
wrote in news:b9abc58c-547e-47ea-b126-

:



Stick it in one of

my stands which lets it rotate,



That will be my big incentive right there. Rotating an antenna to select

better signal strength ratios, and to get a sense of where it comes from, was

the first thing I missed with the longwire, despite the obvious improvements.

I'll still be messing with extending a wire in other directions first though,

before trying to build a magnetic loop. I'll also want to explore the

bevarage matching transformer I bought a few years ago and never before had

the space to explore it properly.

I generally prefer the loops vs a random wire. In the daytime with
ground wave, no contest. With the loop you can almost totally null
daytime ground wave signals. At night, much less directional with the
sky wave, but the station will still often sound better using the loop.
I did a test in 2002 between a 16 inch round loop, and a 42ft "T" vertical
with a 120 ft long flat top wire. That would be fairly similar to using
a long random wire as far as overall performance.

This is the portion of the old post. The audio files are still on
my server. If you shrink your player down so you can watch the time,
and see the text at the same time, you can hear the changes between
the two antennas, and know when I'm steering in a different direction.
Note how I can make an offending ground wave station totally vanish.

Quote from old post..
I have this feeling I don't know what I am supposed to experience from a
working loop.

Anyone have a mp3 file which can show what happens using a loop?

Here is one I did in 2002 comparing my 16 inch circle loop
vs my T vertical on the BC band.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I did a few quick comparisons between a 16 inch loop, and my "T"
vertical, which is about 42 ft tall, with a 120 ft long flat top wire.
It's pretty hot on MW. The radio was my ic-706mk2g. I'll let the
recordings speak for themselves.
You can click on the URL for the sound files, and your media player
"should" bring them right up and start playing. Hopefully anyway...

I did three tests, on three different frequencies, at different times
in the evening. I'm in Houston, and used mainly San Antonio as the
"target" city. "good 200 miles away" I recorded each test. I did
compress the audio greatly to save d/l time, but the audio is still
good enough to tell which is best. The files are pretty small and will
d/l quickly. They were huge files in the original sample rate and
format...I will "narrate" each test, so you will know which antenna
was used, and the exact times I switched. You can use the counter in
the media player to keep track of the time.

Test #1 was at about 7:30 PM on 550 kc.
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest1.mpeg
"Time in seconds"
0-13 -----loop
13-26 -----wire
26-38 -----loop
At 38 seconds I nulled the station, so you can hear the null.
46 -----loop, back pointed to the station
57-69 -----wire
69-end -----loop

Test #2 was at about 8:00 PM on 680 kc.
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest2.mpeg
"Time in seconds"
0-11 -----loop
11-23 -----wire
At 37 seconds I nulled the station
46 -----back pointed to the station
55-67 -----wire
67-end -----loop

Test #3 was at about 9:00 PM on 570 kc. Multiple stations on this
freq...
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest3.mpeg
"Time in seconds"
0-10 ----loop
10-23 ----wire
23-37 ----loop
37-48 ----wire
At 62 seconds, I turn the loop 90 degrees to get a totally different
station.
At 74, I turned back to the first station.
85 ----turned back to 2nd station again
91 ----back to the first

Here is another one on the BC where I turn the loop to null the
station.
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest4.mpeg
At first the station is nulled, and you can hear
a Mexican station in the background. At about 12 seconds,
I turn to the desired station. At 20 seconds I switch to
the T vertical. At 30 seconds I go back to the loop.
At 40 seconds, I null the station again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of old post..

One fairly simple design using PVC for the frame..
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/loop5.jpg