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Have noted several questions/comments
lately about K9AY Loops. Here are a couple of
answers.
Single Loop. If you only wish to
cover one or two directions a single loop will work just fine. When I did
my initial testing with these antennas I temporarily hung a single loop from a
tree in the front yard.
Matching transformer. Per the
original article and per my experiments a 9:1 transformer works best, at least
for coverage of long and medium wave. Claims have been made by others that
a 4:1 transformer will provide marginally better signals on short wave but it
has been my experience that the 9:1 works well there also. If you live in
an isolated and extremely quiet area with no local close in noise sources such
as televisions, computers, powerlines, your neighbors light dimmer, etc the
transformer described in the original QST article will work well. If
you're like most of us and don't have that luxury I would suggest a
"magnetic" type transformer where there is no direct connection
between the antenna and feedline as this can make a real difference in
minimizing local noise pests. Information on transformers of this type is
available from the National Radio Club reprints. Their reprint A69
"NOISE & INTERFERENCE REDUCING ANTENNAS" is available
from
National Radio
Club
Publications
Center
P O Box
164
Mannsville, N Y
13661-0164
U S
A
Price for members in USA/Canada is
$1.50; non-members USA/Canada $2.00 and all other countries $2.20 via
airmail.
For those in Europe who are interested
in these antennas but do not want to build their own Andy Ikin of Wellbrook
Communications has these for sale. Andy can be reached
at
Wellbrook has a firm policy of no sales
to North America. I'm not sure what the current policy is to the rest of
the world. You can contact Andy for availibility and price and if you do
so I would appreciate it if you would mention my name.
73/DX
Al - K 4 G L U
Chincoteague Island, VA,
USA
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