mfj magnetic loop

Tony Hateley

hi,I was thinking of getting a mfj magnetic loop to go with my 6500,as im restricted with what I can put up at my qth,was wondering if anyone else has tried these loops and what were your findings.thanks tony

Dave - WB5NHL

Tony, have you considered attic antennas.  Here is a link to my attic antennas that I was able to use while living in an interior unit of a townhouse.  BTW, I did use a magnetic loop for awhile but found attic antenna much better.
WB5NHL attic antennas

George KF2T

Works very well 20m and up. Easy tuning, once you get the hang of it. Works best mounted in the clear. I used mine vertically, but others choose horizontal.

KT0AM - Mark

Tony, I don't have any personal experience with magnetic loop antennas but I follow the Yaesu FT817 forum on Yahoo and magloops are a favorite and constant discussion topic. If you need to learn about the positive and negative aspects of magnetic loops, you may consider checking that forum.

Cheers!

Duane_AC5AA

I ran an AEA magnetic loop ("Isoloop") for several years when in a restricted area, and it worked surprisingly well.  I liked its low-noise receive characteristics, and, other than very critical tuning that took me a while to learn, I generally worked what I might hear similar to a dipole.  I mounted mine horizontally for omnidirectional coverage.  You can mount it vertically with a small TV rotator and get some nulling effect off the ends.  It also has low-angle radiation.  

Ed, K0KC

Tony,

I use an MFJ loop antenna on 40 through 15 meters in my garage attic "antenna farm" (restricted subdivision). I would estimate that its performance is about as good as an outdoor dipole. The tuning is fairly sharp, but is not a big deal for me as I operate mostly JT65 and JT9 these days and the sub-band for these modes is only about 4KHz. My loop is mounted vertically.

I made one JT65 contact from Ohio to Australia on 40 meters with both ends using an MFJ loop.

Ed, K0KC

Tony Hateley

I work mainly ssb phone

Ed, K0KC

Tony,

I haven't tried much SSB with the loop, but the constant tuning required for a frequency change of only a few KHz would be problematic for you. If you have the space, an indoor dipole would be the best choice.

Ed, K0KC

Duane_AC5AA

Tuning on the higher bands will not be so critical.  On my AEA loop, which covered 10 - 30 MHz, tuning on 10 MHz was fairly critical.  However on 20m, a single tuning was good for 10-15 KHz, and by the time you got to 10m, a single tuning was at least 100 kHz wide as this band was close to the natural frequency for the loop.

Tom--W4FAS

George at what height do you have your magnetic loop mounted?

Tony Hateley

I have not got it mounted yet but when I do it will be about 7m from ground level mounted vertically on a rotator

Ian1

Tony There are several videos on You Tube showing the MFJ loop working well on SSB. I found them by just searching Magnetic Loop. I would post a link but my tablet doesnt let me. The video shows them working well. For my personal use I use a Pixel Loop for receive in the diversity setting on my Flex it's signal is lower then my other antennas as is its noise. Ian

George KF2T

Tom, it was at 25 ft. It's down now, but standing by for the day the HOA Police find my long wire.

KM6CQ - Dan

Hey George, nice to see you on here.

Dan KM6CQ

Mark K9BOO

Hi Tony,

For what its worth, I can offer a couple considerations and a couple experiences I had in a similar situation.

For me, one of the draws to a Flex 6300 radio was being able to monitor a wide swath of frequencies at once.  However, the very narrow bandwidth of high-Q transceiver magnetic loop transceiver antennas, to a large degree, seem to me to negate that benefit.  Trying such transceiver antennas, I could literally see the signal drop-off on each side of the antenna-tuned frequency.  And, with the relatively slow tuning speed of most of narrow-tuning transceiver antennas, its seemed that solution moved me even further backwards from some of the benefits of my FlexRadio.

I live in an extremely challenging, rf-noisy environment.  Of the various whips, loaded, and end-fed antennas I tried, none could be described as being anything but complete failures.

However, I tried a Pixel Technologies (now called Inlogis I think) receive-only magnetic loop antenna.   Though expensive, this type of antenna was successful in receiving signals where all other antennas were miserable failures (in all fairness, it's because I live in a concrete and steel set of buildings).  And, though it is receive-only, it does not require any tuning.  Thus, I can *receive* wide HF frequency swaths with no tuning or related delays.

Since I usually need to hear them to work them, in my case, receiving had priority in the all-antennas-are-a-compromise solution.

Your mileage and priorities may vary.

Good luck!

Mark K9BOO

P.S.  I have no pecuniary interest in either company.  I got my Pixel RF-Pro-1B antenna from DX Engineering, but the other major ham retailers seem to carry it too.

kenwigger

I am glad that you are enjoying your MFJ loop. I recently picked up a W6LVP Magnetic Loop a few weeks ago and put it up about 20 ft on a Channel Master rotator and use it as my receive antenna on my ham station while using a 132 ft Carolina Windom antenna for transmit. I really have found a tremendous difference in noise after going to a loop. I also have a Timewave ANC-4 Noise reducing device that works great in combination with either antenna when fighting noise that is not nulled out by the loop because I am using the loop at times to pick between stations in different locations on the ham bands and also BCB stations. I have a 12 ft noise dipole at 3 ft above the ground for the ANC-4 that I placed right under my electrical power line pole. The combination of a loop and the ANC-4 has allowed me to enjoy listening to Shortwave like back in the 50s and 60s before all of the electrical environment issues we face today.
73s
WD9GNG