10m, on the magloop.

Things have been quite active on 10m over the past few days, prompting interest in new antennas for the band.

For convenience, I generally use my 14Mhz delta at 28Mhz.  I was interested to see how well a magloop I built last year, nominally for the 15m band, would do in comparison to the delta.

The answer, in brief (for once!) is that the magloop, just ~40cm in diameter, performs at least as well as the delta, and probably a bit better for DX (because the delta's pattern at 28MHz is fairly high).

Let's play 10m!

I've been very happily working the band all afternoon, though propagation is very up and down, as usual.  Getting out well into Russia on just 15W, the remotely-controlled matching of the loop completely stable over hours of operation, even in the rain and a gusty, 45mph wind.

And to think that, if you want to buy a magloop, it's a minimum of about £400, three times that for the more 'professional' versions, although, ultimately, there is nothing to any design of magloop other than a bit of metal, a capacitor, and a means of turning the capacitor!

Receiving stations (FT8) mid-afternoon.