An 80 meter full wave Horizontal loop is the best 80 meter antenna I have found for use on my lot here in this subdivision my lot is 150 feet long and 100 feet wide . With the trees Available my loop is more of a triangle of wire than a loop about 30 feet up . I used 75 ohm feedline because I already had some RG-11 up the tower and decided to try it. The full wave loop is 251 feet of insulated house wire #14 I think Fed directly from the 75 ohm coax with an 8 turn de-coupling balun coil at the feed point I am guessing the coil is 8 inches in diameter and the antenna is tuned in the shack with my old Heathkit SA2060-A antenna tuner or sometimes I use the internal tuner in the Icom 7300 that works ok too. This antenna is supported by three trees and a short 30 foot tower using small 3/16 Inch diameter dacron rope I got on Amazon The MFJ 259 antenna analyzer shows the loop impedance very close to 100 ohms impedance that is with the coax connected directly to the MFJ analyzer. This antenna works better than my old dipole did up at 80 feet and has a lower receiver noise floor to boot . I often check in with the guys on the 3846.5 roundtable at 9 AM EST with the 7300 set to roughly 25 watts it works at 25 watts better than the dipole I used to use at 80 feet up using 100 watts .This I determined after using it over this last winter . I was Sure surprised how great this big horizontal loop works Hmmm Now I wonder how would a two wave length loop work ?? . Darn no room to try a 2 wave loop ! 73 Bob
7 сен 2024
