Topband: Re: Noise and reception

[by way of Bill Tippett <btippett@alum.mit.edu>]

Hi, Rick-
I need to dig my Sep 95 QST out of storage and reread the two
articles about the K6STI horizontal loop- but I do remember the
author saying that the antenna will work just about as well at 5
feet of 50 feet as it does at 10 feet elevation. In fact, he said that
there is a minor increase in received signal strength, although not
much. Would you be willing to believe that the antenna might
work 'horizontally' at 50 feet? Heck- it seems to me that 100 feet
is not much 'higher' on top band than 50 feet is. Would you be
more comfortable that a horizontal loop would operate
'horizontally' if it were simplified from the K6STI design back to
a basic, roughly square loop of wire with direct coax feed?
(roughly 1 wavelength perimeter but not necessarily resonant)
How about if it is then lowered down from, say, 50 feet to about
6 feet- would it still behave 'horizontally'? I'm not trying to be
facetious here- I honestly do not know the answer to that
question. I do know that the antenna becomes a lot more lossy
closer to the earth. (not necessarily a bad thing if it is intended
to be used receive-only)
I once had a 1 wavelength horizontal loop for 80m at 6ft height.
It was a pretty good low noise receive antenna. At that time, it
was the only such antenna I had, and it did a good job of
extracting some S/N on signals that were buried in noise on my
inverted vee at 110 ft. As a bonus, I would occasionally forget
to reset the antenna switch from the previous evening and found
I was working into Eu and Africa on 20m with it. I thought I was on
my triband quad at 120ft.  I wondered why signals were so weak
all across the band- yet workable.  :o)   Just goes to show that if
we can temporarily suspend our disbelief, we can often do things
we would not have believed we could.  :o)   73, David K3KY