Hey kids, it's finally on the air..My electrician ran my coax and the
loop is up and running..She's cut for 75/80 and I originally came up
with about 260 ft of wire but I must have measured wrong cause she
show's the lowest swr of ~1.7 to 1 at around 3650..my calculations
showed it should have been around 3850...Oh well, maybe its because
it's not really as high as it should be??..I noticed after a good rain there
appeared to be a lot of slack in one area..could be that the wire stretched a
bit?? It's 13 gauge 19 strand copper clad steel so I was hoping stretch would
be minimal..Oh well..

Anyway, I'm just running straight coax with no balun (except for
several loops of coax at the feed point) so I'm pleased so far with
the swr readings..As a plus, my old kenwood ts450sat tunes her up on
most of the bands without the use of my outboard tuner..although I
will use the outboard tuner to get it close...

Anyway, she plays nice on 80..signals that were barely readable on my
butternut vertical were 20 over on the loop..but that was to be
expected I guess? Suprisingly, the vertical seems to work a little
better on 40..I say "seems" because the static noise was a little
higher on the vertical and the qso I had with a friend about 10 miles
away confirmed that the vertical was a few s units stronger..he was
running a dipole so I would have thought that the loop would have
been stronger as its also horizonitaly polarized..

Same with the upper hf bands(10-20)..seems to be a little
more noise in the recieve with the vertical..but the bands were in
pretty bad shape so It could be that the loop is just that much
quieter than the vertical..time will tell..

Thanks to the group for all the advice/help during the construction phase, it's
definitely paid off..73's

Steve
kb8viv

"Desmoface" wrote in message
...
Hey kids, it's finally on the air..My electrician ran my coax and the
loop is up and running..She's cut for 75/80 and I originally came up
with about 260 ft of wire but I must have measured wrong cause she
show's the lowest swr of ~1.7 to 1 at around 3650..my calculations
showed it should have been around 3850...

Steve,

I had about the same results with my loop. I ended up whacking off about 5
feet after I put it up, and a year later whacked off another 5. There is
some confusion as to what the length should be. Also, several people on this
newsgroup say that if you use insulated wire, you need to make it shorter. I
am using #14 stranded, insulated copper wire.

I wonder where you are feeding it. I started out with the bottom center, and
later changed it to a bottom corner. This gives me both horizontal and
vertical polarization, and no sag in the wire due to the weight of the coax.
EZNEC showed this to be slightly better. I have the center conductor of the
coax going to the vertical wire.

Tam/WB2TT

Hi Tam, I'm feeding it at a corner. It's situated horziontally so its
horizontally polarized...The difference on paper and actual operation is about
15 feet for me...After the winter's passed I may go out and start pruning the
wire a bit..I was originally aiming at 3750/The middle of the band so it looks
like if I trim off about 8 ft that should do it...We'll see...Thanks again for
the info..

Steve
kb8viv

Steve,

I had about the same results with my loop. I ended up whacking off about 5
feet after I put it up, and a year later whacked off another 5. There is
some confusion as to what the length should be. Also, several people on this
newsgroup say that if you use insulated wire, you need to make it shorter. I
am using #14 stranded, insulated copper wire.

I wonder where you are feeding it. I started out with the bottom center, and
later changed it to a bottom corner. This gives me both horizontal and
vertical polarization, and no sag in the wire due to the weight of the coax.
EZNEC showed this to be slightly better. I have the center conductor of the
coax going to the vertical wire.

Tam/WB2TT

Steve,

I had about the same results with my loop. I ended up whacking off about 5
feet after I put it up, and a year later whacked off another 5.

Tam, sounds like your loop is situated vertically?? What did you use for a
feedline? Did you use a balun? What was the lowest swr you obtained?? Thanks
again..

Steve
kb8viv

Also, several people on this
newsgroup say that if you use insulated wire, you need to make it shorter. I
am using #14 stranded, insulated copper wire.


Typical insulated wire should be shortened by about 5%.

Yuri

Steve,

Yes, it is mounted vertically. Not a true square, since the two tree
branches at 75 feet are only 65 feet apart. So, it is a trapezoid, with the
bottom wire about 80 feet long. Feeding a corner with a 1/4 wave section (at
3800) of RG11 75 Ohm coax. This goes into about 100 feet of LMR240. SWR at
the shack end of the 240 is about 1.1:1 at resonance. SWR on 40 and 17
meters is about 5:1. but my Ameritron amp with a Pi network output will load
up OK on both bands. I just keep the power down to 600W or so. I am looking
at replacing the RG11 with a 2.25:1 transformer.

Tam/WB2TT
"Desmoface" wrote in message
...
Steve,

I had about the same results with my loop. I ended up whacking off about
5
feet after I put it up, and a year later whacked off another 5.

Tam, sounds like your loop is situated vertically?? What did you use for a
feedline? Did you use a balun? What was the lowest swr you obtained??
Thanks
again..

Steve
kb8viv