Some time ago I was reading about an full wave loop antenna. I was interested in this antenna right away. Since the preparation for the full radio exam I was told that full size antenna’s always outperform half wave or quarter wave antenna’s. The only problem is the space you need to make such an antenna operational.

Well, over here in the Hautes Alpes there is space enough! So I already bought some fishing rods earlier. A few days back I assembled the fullwave loop antenna for 40 meters. I placed the rods in a square with 10 meters between each rod. Put a wire in between and hooked it up to my TS-50. Immediately I noticed the difference between an open dipole (as setup in earlier article) and this skywire loop. It is much, much more quit on all bands, therefore I can pickup so many more signals. Almost every signal is stronger on the loop then the dipole. Only a few signals are stronger on the dipole. So as I already suspected from all the reading I did on fullwave loops: they perform very well! I will think about a more permanent setup of a skywire loop over here in de Hautes Alpes.

At my current QTH at 44.5362N, 5.9366E, JN24XM (Les Hautes Alpes, France) where I’ll stay the next week, I did want to experiment with a multiband open dipole. Therefore I assembled a lot of electric wire and some wood at home. The only thing I had to do over here was roll it out and find a place to put it up.

Although I’ve build the multiband open dipole for 4 bands (80, 40, 20 and 10m) and had to put 40 meters of wire up in the air, it is no problem to find a place for it here. The only problem is the 2 meters of snow. I had to ‘swim’ through the snow to be able to reach the trees. I can assure you my parents and girlfriend enjoyed my adventure!

After a few hours the dipole was up and running. The first contact with ON50WAASLAND on 80 meters was quickly made. This morning I’ve worked C4EURO on Cyprus on 20 meters. First impression of the dipole is good. My Kenwood AT-50 is able to tune the dipole on all HF bands except 30 meters. In spite off the very bad conditions I get pretty easy good reports. Although I think the multiband dipole is a little bit noisy.

Since we took a 2 weeks holiday from work with this christmas and new year, we went the second week to France to visit my parents. Always nice to be back and reunited with your parents of course. But it is also a cool thing to be here for the hobby! My parents house is on a very large piece of ground in the Alpes in France.
That’s why I can do all kind of experiments with new antenne designs I make at home, but don’t have enough space to build them.

2 antenna’s I want to build this week: a multiband dipole for 80m, 40m, 20m and 10m band. The second one is a skywire loop. I’ve got all the pieces brought with me, so let’s build!

When you look online for a Spiderbeam you will find this document. Looks like a nice building project for the summer?

Via: W8PRC