wrote:
Has anyone had a "bad", as in less then stellar performance, with a
Wellbrook ALA 1530
loop antenna?

Given the almost sacred refference the Wellbrook is held in I have
debated asking
this question. I have a ALA 1530 that is part of a trade that I am
looking at and
guys I just don't get it. This antenna is reputed to be the cat's meow,
but I have
found it marginal at best. A north country active antenna is nearly
it's match
and the 3rd harmonic of a local MW (770KHz) is S3 on the Wellbrook. A
Lankford Active Dipole stomps it in gain, IP2 and IP3 and for
directivity.

I am wondering if this antenna is defective or if it is a case of the
Emperors New
Clothes. I have tried loops several times in the last 30 years and
always give up
becuase I have never found the reported imunity against local QRM to be
true.
I am building a copy of the WL1030 (http://wl1030.com/), but I don't
understand
the fascination with loops. What am I missing?

For MW DX "big" air loops make sense. Good directivity to null out an
offending
signal. I notice Ron Harding uses McKay 100E with a phaser to achieve
good
nulls. For HF the sky wave "smears" both the desired and unwanted
signals
making a null very iffy.

Receivers used in this test:
R2000
R8B
R390
R392
The R390 and R392 where not tested at my home but at a friend's home
where I have them stored. While I like both the R390 and R392, they are
somewhat awkward to rapidly tune from one frequency to a wildly
seperated
one.

Terry

I use the ALA 100. The smaller loops may not be as good on MW. It is a
good idea to insure the amplifer is actually doing something. The fuse
could be blown, the wall wart bad, etc. Unplug the power connector and
make sure the signal strength drops. You will get reception from the
loop even if the amp is off since some RF will leak.

Some of the Wellbrook amps were positive ground. The unit is fused and
I would guess there is a reverse biased protection diode. If the wrong
wall wart was used, it would pop the fuse. In my portable set up, I
have red shrink wrap on the connector that goes to the Wellbrook, just
to make it clear the ground is backwards.

As far as the 1530 goes, it may not have a good resale value since they
released the "plus" version, which has response in the FM BCB.