[Lowfer] I made the hole in my antenna bigger!!!! USA

[Paul A. Cianciolo]

Hello Folks,

Well here's the deal....
What is a loop antenna anyway?  Is it an exotic combination of copper wire
support by dielectric insulating material that is used to impedance matching
device between our 50 ohm transmitter and the 377 ohm atmosphere?

Does it have a complex relationship with its surrounding enviorment?  Yes
maybe...


But what it REALLY is(the loop) is a HOLE. And you surround that hole with
wire. The bigger the hole the more wire it takes to surround the hole,
Seems like a simple concept really....   So if you have a given amount of
wire you can only surround a certain size hole.  The best shaped hole
appears to round,  why not it works for manhole covers!

Well the hole in the middle of my antenna was rectangular.  Not a very good
shape for a hole.  I mean did you ever see a drill that makes a rectangular
hole?  I made apoint as I went through my daily life to take note of every
hole that I came in contact with.  End result????  Most holes are round.
SOme examples  Baketball hoop, sewer pipe hole, 3 hole punch, even the hole
in your nose is essentially round.  If its good enough for the Creator then
its good enough for me.  I did not one exception however..  A keyhole is not
round indeed but that is beyond the scope of this email.

Seemed to me like if my antenna was work better, it needed to be shaped more
like a round hole.  This is hole I spent my afternoon.  Making the hole in
my antenna bigger and rounder, but still using the same amount of wire.

The initial shape of the hole was rectangular as I have said.  I did not
change the length of the wire at all.
But on all sides of the hole except the top I pulled on the wire to sort of
bulge out the sides therefor occuping more space inside the hole.  Well I
have a non resonant chunk of wire I use with my HP SVM that is about several
hundred feet away.  It is used to monitor the signal of the USA beacon. Here
are some results:

1) Original config   -67.60

2) sides bulged out  -67.40

3) bottom bulged     -64.51


Each change was accompanied by a corresponding change in the tuning cap...
each time more C was needed.


The last change got me almost 1 more db

The wire/cable I am using is the old Belden 9555 which is the cable used for
early computer LANs.
It consists of 2 RG-59 type cables siamesed together.  I was using the
cables in paralell.
I decided to put a 12" spreader made of fiberglass around the entire hole.
Agian tuning changed... More C

End result after this was done was -63.6 on the SVM.
I guess the proximity effect really does exist.


Well thats how I spent the afternoon trying to improve my hole containment
system.

As Bartles & James used to "Thank you and we appreciate your support"

PaulC
W1VLF
USA

Thinking outside the hile