Monday, August 8, 2011

Experimenting with a Delta Loop

Using an inverted vee for the 30 meter band I have had some good results but quite frankly the noise level is fairly high so I have been searching around looking for some other type of antenna which will give me good dx capabilities but will have a quieter noise level. After trawling the internet and seeing various ideas I came across the sloping delta loop and having checked the dimensions to make sure it would fit within the garden boundary went ahead with building one.

It didn’t take me too long and within a day I had set one up at 30ft with the feeder at the top so it was radiating horizontally. To be honest it was quieter noise wise, but from reading all the reports I should have also been getting better reception but it seemed the same as the inverted vee, so I decided to try and raise the whole antenna to make it a level loop to see if there was any difference. Again a similar response so either I’m not doing something right or I have tweaked it all I can, it still has the shape of a triangle but no longer sloping, any ideas?

What I might try next is a quad simply by changing the shape but keeping the antenna at the same height, see if that makes any difference.

- The Next Day:
An update: Just goes to show if you read up on the internet you can find out where you are going wrong! Checking out horizontal loops I read about ”cloud warming” and realised that my radiating signals were going straight up, a confirmation of this was when I heard a UK station who was around 50 miles away with a 5/9 signal.

So I reverted back to a sloping delta loop with the base being about 10ft off the ground, not perfect I know but at least it should stop the cloud warming. This morning before going to work I switched on the Yaesu and tuned in to 30 meters, blow me, there was a VK station coming in at 579!
Just goes show a little bit of tinkering and internet knowledge can go a long way.

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