As many of you know that I am living in city of Heraklion, in the same situation with more of you.
Living in big cities has all plus of the day living but its not amateur friendly, especially on low bands.
For me its normal to have 59+10dbs on 160m and 5-8 5-9 on 80 meters band. Crete is extremely mountainous so the properties here even in small villages aren't big enough for beverages antennas.The second solution coming with EWE' or K9AY antennas. The problems is that both and other similar antennas need space and good earth ground, which is hard to find on cities roof when used also by XYL's for laundry.
So after thinking, searching, asking, what remains? Active loop of course!!
I had the luck to took a gift from both good friends SV9COL and SV9OFS a wellbrook ALA 1530 antenna. Initially installed on direction east west without a rotator, but was hard to make some secure conclusions about its performance. Next step was to find a small rotator to check it better and like that done.
After 2 weeks the rotator broke and I was very angry. During this 2 weeks time I cant say that I was satisfied, the noise went down but cant dig the weak signals. The configuration was 2m wood pole and 45m rg 58 to shack.
Next thing was to search similar solution but with better performance, probably some band tuned Loops and LNA. In the meantime LZ2WO Valio, suggested to me by Hristo LZ3FN as well known low band DXer and homebrowing. He suggested to me to check for Alford loop and it's origin K6STI. After starting to plan a new RX antenna found a new Bulgarian (
active antenna system ) made preamplifier with very good characteristics, plus the feed line which is with ftp cable and not with coaxial with all plus witch that means.The difference is that the combination of two loops antennas plus dipole or monopole and remote change the direction of loop S-N E-W by clicking a switch or both antennas as well. The all project is under hard testing and working with 2 x aluminum 1m loops with different thickness. The only sure is that this hardware configuration working better than the wellbrook antenna. Stay tune.
Both meter loops one looking JA and PY
Checking the inductance of each one loops (need more improvement )
LZ1AQ active antenna board
