On Jan 1, 9:16 am, wrote:
I must be doing something right because we had another power outage
last night,
or early this morning from 1:00AM until 3:00AM.

I had restrung a 50' random wire antenna from the WR LWA-0130 Long
Wire Antenna Adapter mounted under the eves to a fiber glass pole tied
to a fence post.

I compared three antennas, a Lankford "Simplified Complimentary
Antenna',
the same antenna with a built in Lankford "Norton RF amp" and the
LWZ-0130.

After a few tests I dropped the active with the built in Norton RF
amp. Simply put,
there is still too much background noise to make the amp useful.

I A/B tested the other 2 from CB, 27.035 had a nice distance
conversation, down to 100KHz Loran C. As expected the Lankford
"Simplified Complimentary Antenna' was the winner. At every frequency
the signals were cleaner on the Lankford antenna, though in many cases
the difference was just noticeable.

At 3:03AM when the AC came back on, the LWA-0130 and 50' random wire
antenna became nearly useless. The QRM jumped up to at least S3 up to
15MHz on the LWA-0130. The noise increased on the Lankford active
antenna rose as well, but never reached S1.

As I thought, if one lives in a remote RFquite area the typical random
wire
antenna is clearly a worthwhile antenna. In built up and noisy areas
it's
utility decrease.

I admit that I need to mount the LWA-0130 at least 50' from our home,
but
that isn't practical right now.

Terry

Loop antennas are better at rejecting man made noise. I think I've
plugged Wellbrook too much already on the group, but their products
are the way to go for urban environments. But even in the boonies, my
ala100 and homemade loop worked better than about 80ft of wire and the
palomar magnetic balun.

The advantage to the loop is you can rotate it to null the noise
source if the frequency is relatively low. Certainly for MW and
lower.