Cross Country Wireless Loop Antenna Amplifiers

Our Aerials Now specialist Keith Rawlings is covering the two new CCW loop antenna amplifiers in his March and April columns for RadioUser. The devices come as a kit with all the electronics needed for home DIY construction of an active loop (magnetic loop) low noise receiving antenna. CCW states that, using a simple wire loop or delta and a small USB power bank, this makes for a very compact and portable receiving antenna for holiday listening or covert use. Since we are currently publishing a very successful three-part series on Portable DXing, by Clint Gouveia, I thought I’d try out this loop, in the configuration pictured. Out and about in Cumbria and Lancashire with my Tecsun S8800, I focussed on late afternoon and evening medium wave and short wave DXing and was well impressed with what this loop pulled in. Transatlantic DX is great the moment (see: RadioUser, January to March 2020, International Radio Scene), and I had few problems listening to some of my favourite music stations, such as The Voice of Greece or All India Radio (9420 and 9445kHz). Of the two versions available, I used the VLF to HF model; there is also another, HF to VHF version, which has a higher impedance input (500kHz to 150MHz). This version has slightly higher gain and is recommended for use with the 5V bias-tee antenna feed on SDRPlay and some RTL-SDR receivers. When I took the aerial back indoors and connected it to my HF150, I obtained very good results on RTTY and WXFAX signals, during Storms ‘Ciara’ and ‘Dennis’.

(Sources: GW/ CCW)

http://www.crosscountrywireless.net