[Lowfer] Lowfer TAG on the air

[pete at pcranwell.com]

Do you have any photos of your loop ?

For receiving, I have been using an MFJ remote active antenna and an DSRPlay receiver.  I have my antenna on the edge of a 100 foot cliff away from everything.  I live in Jefferson National forest with a county population of less than 5000 and I am separate from my nearest neighbor by a comfortable distance.   The control for the active antenna is via an old satellite TV line (RG6) that runs underground about 300 feet to the cliff.

I used a receiving loop for years with good results and may return to it to compare to the results from the MFJ receiving antenna but the MFJ allows me to monitor the NDBs with little effort whereas the loop required tuning for every NDB frequency.   My tuning was with a pair of MVAM109 varicaps which had the bias supplied via CAT5 , the same CAT5 returning the received signal to my receiver.

Do you have a web site that shows your setup?    QRZ was little help 😊


Pete

-----Original Message-----
From: lowfer-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:lowfer-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of John Andrews
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 6:40 PM
To: lowfer at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Lowfer] Lowfer TAG on the air

Pete,

Sorry for the slow response. Non-radio stuff intrudes...

I started playing with LF stuff back in the 70's, but until 1990 was 
living next to the transmitter site of a 5 kW AM on 580 kHz (my 
employer). LF reception was very difficult, to say the least. Then we 
moved to a neighborhood that was more residential, but with limited 
antenna possibilities, and increasing noise levels. I really got into 
the hobby in the late '90s, and had pretty good results with mostly loop 
antennas.

By this time, most (but not all) of the Lowfer activity was on 
slow-speed CW, BPSK, etc. A few of us with vertical antenna - unfriendly 
sites (high environmental losses due to trees) began experimenting with 
loop transmitting antennas. And counting angels on heads of pins while 
trying to justify regulatory compliance. I eventually got an 
Experimental license for the 137 kHz band, and ran at various power 
levels for a dozen years until it became a ham band. At that point, I 
was shut down due to presumed lack of separation between my setup and a 
PLC-carrying HV transmission line (which had not been the least bothered 
for those dozen years).

I started TAG in Holden, MA in the early 2000's, and later moved it to a 
site in Raymond, ME, where it could run during the winter without 
bothering any ham radio activities of mine. That site is heavily wooded, 
and I use a loop antenna fed with a Class D 1w PA.

That's about it. I envy your association with Ken Cornell. It must have 
been quite an education. And the 2E26 was a popular PA in those days, 
I'm told, leading to some successes that would be hard to duplicate now 
with increased noise levels and little plastic transistors.

John, W1TAG

On 10/20/2025 10:17 AM, pete at pcranwell.com wrote:
> I read your Bio on QRZ.   I was hoping it might have some info on TAG.
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