I live in the centre of a reasonably busy village, near a sub-station for the electricity board. My main antenna for 160m is an inverted ‘L’ with a fair earth system, but it’s a noisy receiving antenna. With little prospect of getting a beverage deployed, I’ve been looking into the Wellbrook ALS 1530 magnetic loop as a receiving antenna.
Situated away from the house, I’ve been impressed with the performance of the loop compared with the inverted L on 160m, and have made two recordings which compare the antennas. The Wellbrook produces a weaker signal, but with much better signal to noise in these recordings of a fishing beacon on 1815.6 (picked for ease of reference – they must have some use!).
- Inverted L – 0:13 MP3
- Wellbrook loop – 0:13 MP3
Considering the incredibly compact, low-profile nature of the Wellbrook loop I am quite impressed already – looking forward to testing it on some real DX soon. I may also have some idea about how it performs on 80m to share (but I’m not expecting it to be quite so dramatic up there).
73
Michael G7VJR