Beginner's Corner: One Hour on a Magloop

This blog was set up with the aim of promoting cheap, simple ham radio.  That's because people with huge pensions and 38-ton RVs tend to forget, in their dash for the biggest, most expensive and macho equipment, that radio can be done very effectively on very little.

So, because I haven't visited this topic for a while, here's what you can achieve with a simple loop of 15mm copper tube made so that it fits readily into a standard car, sits on a wooden stand when in use, and has a £3 air spaced capacitor that, whilst a bit fiddly, you can nevertheless easily tune by ear to a 1:1 SWR - no ATU needed (nor would it be effective!)  Note that I don't use a small loop to excite the main loop; althogh that works just as well, my twisty bit of insulated Flexweave wire, which loosely corresponds to a twisted gamma match, and connects to the top on the right, is much more physically robust and hence electrically stable. 

The location was the worst I could find at this QTH: just outside the door with the house blocking about half the horizon.  Here's what it looks like:

About 1m off the ground, surrounded by lots of stuff!

So, running 5W out of the loop from this rubbish position for an hour or so prior to the grey line, yielded the following results on WSPR.  In other words, what you can do with WSPR you can also do with many other digital modes, especially JT65A, OLIVIA, ROS and so on.  So there really is no financial or ability hurdle in making one of these and working global DX!