Topband: CW Activity

[Roger Kennedy]

Hi Rick 

I did try a Loop on the Ground a couple of years ago, and by the time I
brought signals up to the same levels as my Tx antenna, the noise level was
actually worse !

That's when I built my resonant Multi-turn Loop up in my loft. At least with
that I was able to rotate it to null the noise as much as possible - and
fortunately that ends up  with it pointing East-West, which is the best
direction for most DX from Britain.

Most of the current high noise levels here in Britain are coming from the
fact that the Internet is sent to most houses over existing copper phone
wires . . . so the wires go up a 30ft wooden pole, and then fan out to the
eaves of 8 or more houses . . . so there's one of these poles typically
every 200 feet along each street.

Those act as wonderful antennas, radiating the wideband hash from the
Internet signals !

Fortunately, the phone wires in my street are underground (which is why I
don't have an S9+ noise level, like most people in the city) . . . but at
the end of my street there are dozens of phone wires, within one wavelength
on 160m !

At least nearly all our mains cables in Britain are underground . . . 

73 Roger G3YRO

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Kunath [mailto:k9ao at yahoo.com] 
Sent: 08 April 2020 13:40
To: Roger Kennedy; topband at contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: CW Activity

Roger,

Have you tried a LoG (Loop on Ground) receiving antenna? I have one here and
it works wonders.

Info at this site: http://www.kk5jy.net/LoG/

I built mine a bit larger but it's non-critical in construction. It worked
wonders for me. It's also essentially invisible too.

I wanted to try this so I got my hands on a 500 foot roll of twisted pair
doorbell wire cheaply. I paralleled the wires for the loop and wound up
using the twisted pair as a feedline to the shack. I have a 9:1 balun at the
shack end. All the wire is on the ground even the feedline. 
It was just a quick lash up, but it worked amazingly well. I refined the
install after that, and experimented with different sizes too. My loop is
about double the size mentioned in the article.

I was going to switch to coax buried feed and relocate the balun to the
antenna end of the feedline, but it's been working so well I never got
around to it.

It might be worth a try. There is a Facebook group on the antenna too.

Rick K9AO