[TowerTalk] Horizontal Loop Performance??

[David Thompson]

A 160 horizontal loop up at least 40 feet
will lay down a strong signal out up to 1200 miles.  As you go higher in 
bands the better angle for Dx you get.

I had a 80 meter full size loop  on St. Simons Island, GA and found that 
although I was down slightly on DX I could easily work Europe and South 
America on 75.  On 40 it worked very well to Europe.  On 20 to 10 I worked 
6K QSOs on the IOTA frequencies in the early 1990's and led the SE ARRL 
Division Low Power in the ARRL DX SSB in 1992.

The beauty was I could wrap the antenna around the evergreen trees.  I 
actually had to add 15 feet to the antenna to make a closed loop.  I fed 
this antenna with RG8X to a tuner.

On 160 the full wave loop was not a great Dx performer on 160 .  If there is 
room a short vertical or an inverted V might fill in the gap.

The two best articles on horizontal loops are The Loop Skywire by Dave 
Fischer, W0MHS now W7FB in a late 1984 QST and the German Quad by a young 
German college Student studying at Georgia Tech in a 1980 73 Magazine.

Dave K4JRB