"rickman" wrote in message
...
On 11/22/2012 2:18 PM, coffelt2 wrote:

Yikes! Here you over here too!

Yeah, I think this is where I should be. The other group sounds like it
is more about bought equipment than homemade.


Loop antennas sure have more "capture area" than ferrite loopsticks,
using "seat of the pants" engineering, I always wondered just how the
marked directivity of the loop antenna could be put to use in a "dual
Diversity"
scheme for noise cancelling. It was used (and perhaps still is) for
"selective
fading" and interference rejection on large, HF antenna farms.
Marine and aircraft beacon band receivers used both rotatable loops
and loopsticks in conjunction with a "sense" antenna for enhanced
directional reception.
I'm over my head, so I'm bailing. Please keep us informed of progress!

Old Chief Lynn

It seems to be the null that is highly directional. I expect when they
used loops for DF they turned the antenna until the signal faded and used
the null as the directional part.

I ordered some RG-6 with a solid copper center conductor. The shield is
aluminum so I'm hoping that doesn't hurt. A number of sources talk about
the importance of keeping the conductor resistance low to maximize the Q
of the tuning. I need to do my calculations and select the loop size and
number of turns. I don't think I want to make it very large, so I'm
hoping more turns will compensate for a modest size.

I'll let you know. This group is a little quiet, but that's better than
all the noise in some other groups. As I'm sure you know, what is
important is not the signal level, but the SNR!

Rick

"Understanding Digital Signal Processing" by Richard G. Lyons is a good
source of information.

If you plan to do the FPGA code yourself check out: www.myhdl.org

For the antenna consider: www.febo.com/time-freq/wwvb/antenna

At 60 KHz RG-58 would be as good as RG-6 for a loop antenna and much easier
to work with. PCV pipe is a good material for the frame. email me directly
and I'll send you a photo of a 1m VLF antenna I made.

Unless you are located in Boulder, CO you will probably need an analog
amplifier.