Scrap Aluminum Evolves into a Transmitting Magnetic Loop Antenna

I have been building and experimenting with antennas for most of my 30 plus years in this hobby. Over the last 5 years I have really focused on magnetic loop or small transmitting loop antennas.

I have built several, however, this one is nothing special other than my youngest son Noah, asked me to help him make an antenna today. The project was kicked off by rolling some aluminum tube (12' long, 1" O.D.) into a loop. Our only investment into this antenna was to be scrap material laying around the shop. This video is a brief summary of what we ended up with by dinner time.

I still need to TIG weld the gamma mach to the loop and then try to improve upon the quick and dirty throw together tuning of capacitive plates.

This design is not too friendly to frequency hopping as tuning the capacitor proved to be very tedious in this situation, again, it was rigged with scrap materials in a fly by the seat of my pants manner. It however would make a great fixed frequency antenna. Actually on 10, 12, 15 and 17 meters, it seemed to have some decent usable TX bandwidth with out retuning, whereas on 20 meters, I have to retune every 15 Khz or so.

It seems to receive on 40 meters very well, but have not yet checked to see if it will provide 3Khz or more of bandwidth for SSB TX, maybe tomorrow I will try.

Thanks for watching and please keep the comments and suggestions coming.

73
VE3UK Bob

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Magnetic
• Loop
• Magloop
• Small
• transmitting
• antenna
• portable
• QRP
• on
• 20
• Meters

[wx9dx]

How about sharing your plans???

Jimmy:)

[PortableQRP]

@wx9dx For detailed discussion regarding this loop or other loops, please visit MagLoop in Yahoo usergroups.

Bob

[radiobigman47]

cool maybe you can show us more

[PortableQRP]

@radiobigman47 For detailed discussion regarding this loop or other loops, please visit MagLoop in Yahoo usergroups.

Bob

[ve3tmg]

looks good i need you to make me one for 17m.

73 Terry

[PortableQRP]

Terry, this one works great on 17M, see the next video. Due to the characteristics of this type of antenna, it will even work better on 15, 12 and 10 respectively and slightly less efficient on 20M.

Thanks, your antenna is now on the bench.

[baznet]

Chemtrails over Ontario

[TimeTravelerTN]

DE W4ZJM

[TimeTravelerTN]

Made one of these Loop antenna's way back in around 1960. We used to use it for direction finding in rabbit hunts. Flip them horizontal, and you have a horizontal omni directional antenna. Wish I had my old one to use today. If you use it on 2 meters or other bands ( smaller size for VHF and uhf ) you can also add a vertical reflector element which will give you a sharper null in the direction of the station you are trying to DF. Mount if with a beam ant, and you can target your signal perfect

[9w2pju]

can i have the diagram ?

[29pu04]

if this was built by a cber you would get the plans by email and not being made join in a group that you want no part of? ham guys keeping it to min.

[KYLake]

Nice videos Bob. Have you ever made a magnetic loop for 80 meters? I was looking for something that wasn't real real noisy and wasn't a real big antenna. For receive on 160 and 80.

[G0IFI]

Crafty tuning cap idea! Looks very professional.

73 de Perry G0IFI