Continuing adventures with the LF loopstick... presently tuned to 2200m. Latest improvement:
(1) Output matched (finally) to 75 ohm coaxial cable for much better signal transfer.
(2) External capacitor control on component box for fine adjustment of exact resonance and ease of retuning.https://www.dropbox.com/s/952kozl7dr29jta/20221207_144744.jpg?dl=0
Background shows the L400B mounted on the gate pole. Foreground is the LF loopstick suspended between fence poles. The black resonance tuning knob can be see on the matching component box. The stick is orientated in the end-to-end N-S position to receive W-E signals. By pure luck, the desired rx direction also provides a null in the noise from the powerlines... again PURE luck.
The stick is working quite well without amplification and is cabled into the shack to feed my sdr's. Because of powerline noise, the stick is outperforming the L400B by approx. 11db on most 2200m signals. In the RARE times when the noise disappears, the L400B will equal the performance of the stick. One drawback of the stick is it's very sharp resonance response which necessitates capacitor re-tuning with temperature changes. Yes, I know I could go with varactor "padding" to remotely (bias-T) bring the system to resonance, but that's more complication than I wish to deal with at this time.
I'm impressed with the sticks performance for it being so electrically short, ground independent, and only a few feet off of ground level. I'm "hearing" well on 2200m with it. WB5MMB is on 2200m wspr2 with a EIRP of 20dbm at 214 miles from me. His signal generally produces a +1 to +2 db with occasional +4db wspr2 decodes.
Ray ... N. Central Texas.