Antenna Fun
So I've been plagued, since I got set back up two weeks ago, with a noise level that made phone contacts near-impossible and digital contacts difficult.
I'd put a G5RV up in the tree in the back yard two weeks ago, and it's been picking up some severe electrical noise on most frequencies up to and including the 20M band. What few contacts on phone I was able to make said I was coming in gangbusters, but I played hell hearing them.
Today I put up a Delta Loop antenna, which is just a loop of wire. I didn't measure it for any particular band, because I want it to be more broadbanded, and if you, for example, tune it for 40M, it will refuse to tune on 30M, 17M, or 12M, but it might work well on 20, 15, and 10.
I am able to easily switch between the two antennas in the shack. I made a phone contact on 40M this afternoon, on the G5RV... a station in New York State who was coming in S9+20 to 40... On the G5RV, he reported my signal at S9+20. On the loop I was S9+10. Not a lot of loss on transmit, but the receive.. holy cow the difference. I couldn't hear the other stations he was talking to when I was on the G5RV because of the noise level, but when I switched to the loop, I could hear two of the other stations he was talking to before I keyed up!
Success! Yes, my transmit on the loop is down from the G5RV, but only a little. The benefit is the noise cancellation the loop provides.
The loop's noise floor, daytime on 40M, is around S7 to S8. the G5RV's noise floor is S9+20 on a good day, and higher most of the time.
So a couple of hours in the cold and I've got an antenna I can hear people on.
It's time to get back on the air.