24 thoughts on “Using amplified loop antennas with portable radios?”

1. Bruce January 18, 2021 at 11:45 am

   Pks Loop are designed specificly for your needs and any adapters you may need, I love mine, works great on all my radios. Theres also one I bought from Greece off ebay. Theres none on there now, except the extra one I had ordered extra. Both perform very well.

   Reply ↓
   1. Samuel Rhine August 5, 2021 at 9:54 pm

      But how does PK perform compared to Sony AN-LP1? I been looking at PK Hamloop model which costs around same as used AN-LP1.

      Reply ↓
2. Andrew October 6, 2019 at 12:48 pm

   Late but maybe useful to others

   http://www.kk5jy.net/LoG/

   if you have a really little bit of garden or backyard TRY IT

   You’ll be surprised 😉

   Reply ↓
3. RonF July 12, 2019 at 3:53 am

   “I live in a ground-floor apartment, with a small porch, lots of RFI and restrictions against visible antennas.”

   Given that, I’ll gently disagree with Thomas’ recommendation of an amplified wideband loop. I think an unamplified remotely-tuned loop would be a better choice. My reasoning:

   (Note: all of this applies to ‘electrically-small’ loops; the typical 30cm-1m diameter loop everybody thinks of as ‘shortwave receive loops’. Fractional wavelength or larger loops, as used by hams who like to boast of their large backyards and antenna farms, are somewhat different beasts…)

   – Any well-balanced loop antenna – amplified or unamplified, tuned or untuned – will provide both (a) directionality (the ability to null individual noise sources or maximise signal) and (b) a degree of immunity to immediately-local noise within the near-field distance of a given frequency.
   – Unfortunately, when mounted near (within 1/2 wavelength or so) of obstacles/reflectors – the ground, walls/brickwork, etc – directionality pretty much goes out the window. Best case (30MHz) at HF, “1/2 wavelength” is 5m.

   So in this situation we’re left with immunity to near-field (i.e. predominantly E-field) noise as a loop’s big advantage. That’s actually quite a biggie – it means that, unlike E-field antennas (e.g. whips, longwires, etc), they’re not _as_ susceptible to noise generated in your house (&, depending on distance, your neighbours’ houses). So +1 to loops in general so far.

   The big downside to electrically-small loops is they’re inefficient; their absolute output level is very low. That may lead you to think that an amplified loop – moar powa! – is better than a non-amplified loop. Rarely are things that simple… :

   – Unless your radio is deaf (i.e. faulty, or with poor sensitivity or high internal noise level due to poor design), the limiting factor for reception is the local RF noise floor.
   – Any amplified loop will amplify both the wanted signal, and all the noise & other signals within the antenna’s passband. For a wideband loop, the antenna’s passband is the loop bandwidth (realistically, let’s say 500kHz-20MHz)
   – Outside the edge cases of the local RF noise floor being below the radio’s internal noise floor (unusual, especially at LF/MW/HF), or the radio being particularly deaf, you’ve achieved nothing except make both the wanted signal – and all the noise + unwanted signal across 20MHz – louder. If you started with a wanted signal 10dB above the local noise floor, after amplification it’s still going to be only 10dB above the noise floor. Or, in practice, a little less – since any amplifier will add some noise…
   – The higher wideband noise level, though, makes the receiver’s job harder – the general amount of noise getting through the filters is higher, there’s more possibility of overload/intermod/other distortion, etc, etc.
   – A tuned loop, on the other hand, (a) adds no noise, and (b) both reduces the full-bandwith noise (i.e. increased selectivity) and increases the wanted signal presented to the receiver by a factor related to the Q of the tuned circuit. Effectively, they operate as a very narrow preselector: Tuned circuit = higher Q = stronger wanted signal, less unwanted noise. All pluses.

   The only downside to tuned loops – at least, the only one compared to loops in general – is that the loop needs to be tuned to track the receiver. Which is why people will often use a random-wire or whip for initial tuning, listening carefully to find a faint signal, then switch to the loop to drag it out of the noisy mud.

   So, to summarise the story so far: sitting on a small porch will bugger up one advantage of a loop (directionality). Having to have it so close to the house, however, brings a loop’s insensitivity to near-field noise to the fore. And, unless your radio is deaf – or you’re in the possibly unique situation of being in both an apartment *and* a place with a low RF noise floor – an amplified loop will hinder as much as it helps, while a tuned unamplified loop will help more than it hinders.

   And if I’m wrong, you can always add a small externally-powered amp afterwards… 😉

   Which leaves you with the problem of your body corporate/HOA not wanting externally-visible antennas:

   – Well, loops are easy to make portable – mine’s a 1m diameter loop of 3mm thick flat aluminium bar mounted on an old broomstick stuck into the cast-iron base of an old lamp, and could be easily moved inside (if I wasn’t on the body corp and therefore able to shut down any objections to it!).
   – Buy one of those wire loops Thomas posted recently, and get creative! Buy a cheap outdoor table, screw the loop down to it, paint it some blending-in colour, wrap it in some plastic flowers, connect it up with some discrete RG-178, and tell any nosey neighbours it’s a feng shui enhancer…

   Reply ↓
   1. Thomas Post authorJuly 12, 2019 at 7:17 am

      Very good points, Ron! And, you know, a setup with a simple random wire and passive loop combo could be incredibly affordable if home-brewed.

      Reply ↓
   2. TomL July 12, 2019 at 4:35 pm

      How would one remotely tune this to use with a portable radio like the reader question describes? Creating one’s own remote tuner takes some amount of electronics knowledge most people do not possess. Is there a commercial product that one can purchase?

      Reply ↓
      1. RonF July 12, 2019 at 10:28 pm

         Same as you’d tune any varactor-tuned receive loop – either an adjustable bias tee feeding a control voltage up the coax, or a second pair of wires for same. Connection to the reader’s PL-660 is via the external antenna socket on the side – 3.5mm to BNC adaptor not supplied ;).

         Plenty of designs available on the web to DIY, and they’re not that hard (if you can wind a balun and solder connectors for a proper random-wire, you’re skilled enough). Certainly easier than building, say, a PA0RDT mini-whip kit.

         There used to be a couple of pre-built remote-tuned SW loops available, but they seem to have gone by the wayside – perhaps not surprising, because there was no ‘secret sauce’ to explain away the exorbitant pricing, and they lack the illusion of sensitivity that amplified loops give. Though I don’t really follow the commercial world, currently the closest things I know of offhand are the remote-tuned PK loops – but they’re MW-only.

         RH Electronics makes a kit that appears to be a copy of the Charles Wenzel tuned *active* SW loop mentioned by Andrew below, which could be modded as per the instructions on his site for remote tuning (using an extra pair of wires). That design was actually my introduction to small loop antennas, and I have fond memories of it – but, due to both its design and the choice of amplifier, isn’t really an optimal example of either a tuned or amplified loop. It’s also considerably more complicated to build than a simple remotely-tuned loop. It does work fairly well, though, especially if you’re not yet convinced that a non-amplified tuned loop has advantages over an amplified wideband loop 😉

         But, ultimately, the best thing a SWL’er can do in either – or any – case is to get their antenna out & above the near-field noise, and deal with the ambient local noise floor. It’s where you can’t – as in Marty & my case – where tuned unamplified loops come to the fore.

         Reply ↓
   3. Andrew July 15, 2019 at 6:52 am

      “Buy a cheap outdoor table, screw the loop down to it, paint it some blending-in colour, wrap it in some plastic flowers, connect it up with some discrete RG-178, and tell any nosey neighbours it’s a feng shui enhancer…”

      Or either, he may build this LW/MW loop antenna

      https://randombio.com/loopantenna.html

      it’s a passive, remotely tuned loop; tuning is achieved through varactors and the loop covers approximately a range going from 150KHz to 2MHz, to hide such an antenna, one may enclose it into some suitable casing (wood or the like will do) and disguise it for a porch table, one may even place a vase with a plant over it 🙂 judging from the author, the loop is very sensitive and the tuning is quite sharp, for example, when tuned to 158 kHz, the antenna only responds to signals between about 155 and 161 kHz, this, along with the ability to null-out interferences by orienting the loop may allow to obtain a nice reception, plus the antenna will be totally stealth 🙂

      Reply ↓
4. Mark July 11, 2019 at 9:50 pm

   I frequently use a W6LVP “Experimenter” loop with an Eton E1 on trips to a local park to get electrical quiet with no problem. In fact, I did just that on the 4th. Maybe next time I will try it on the Tecsun 660.

   Reply ↓
5. Vkaplan July 11, 2019 at 7:11 pm

   Degen 31ms antenna could be great choice, with small upgrades, since that thing is really fragile.

   Reply ↓
   1. Adam Toynton February 6, 2021 at 10:58 am

      Hi, I’m very late with a reply to this post but hopefully somebody will find it useful as I have been experimenting with loop antennas for years now both amplified and passive ones and the very best one I have ever used has been a homemade one using an amplifier board I purchased ready-made from America. I’ll try to put the link to my blog page in the comments. It has been quieter than any passive loop I have made and and is is quite simply exceptional. What’s more I put it together for not much more than about 25 pounds GBP.

      http://m6rdp.blogspot.com/2020/06/homemade-active-loop-for-lw-ndbs-mw-and.html?m=1

      73 Adam

      Reply ↓
6. Andrew July 11, 2019 at 2:09 pm

   Also see

   https://swling.com/blog/2017/01/klaus-magnetic-loop-antenna-in-urban-camouflage/

   for an idea about hiding a loop antenna in plain sight 🙂

   Reply ↓
7. Andrew July 11, 2019 at 1:50 pm

   What about a “flagpole” antenna ?

   http://www.n1gy.com/hidden-antennas.html

   It looks like a flagpole but it’s a vertical antenna, the base hides the connection box

   By the way given that there aren’t rules against waving a flag, that is 🙂 !

   Reply ↓
   1. Martin July 11, 2019 at 2:13 pm

      Hi Andrew. No, a flagpole antenna isn’t possible. I’m not allowed to put up anything that extends beyond the porch.
      Tenants who want dish antennas for cable TV have to get permission first before the antenna is installed.

      Reply ↓
      1. Andrew July 12, 2019 at 7:08 am

         Here I am, Martin, back at you.

         First of all there’s a BIG question, that is… BUY or BUILD ?

         I mean, while there are a number of commercial active antennas around, some of them are quite costly and the cheaper ones don’t offer the same level of performance (although will still be better than nothing); on the other hand, if you are able to use a soldering iron to put together some relatively simple circuit, then there are quite some good active antenna projects which may fit and will give you quite good performance

         A very simple, yet nice performing antenna is the “miniwhip” found here

         http://www.techlib.com/electronics/antennas.html#Improved%20Active%20Antenna

         it can be powered through the coax and is untuned, yet, thanks to its design it offers performances which may be compared with a full size vertical antenna, sure, it won’t be as “quite” as a loop, yet it’s easy to build and cheap and may be possibly mounted as a “stealth” antenna in your porch 🙂 !

         Another option may be a “roof butterfly” like the one depicted here

         https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b3/bb/d1/b3bbd1e7bcdea676221d11d43599353c.jpg

         or you may just use the above idea to lay some length of wire around the roof (or under it, for that) w/o configuring it as a “butterfly” but leaving the “loop” open (with enough distance between the start and end of the wire); notice also that, if using a “random wire” antenna, you’ll need a balun to match the impedance to the receiver’s input, for such a task you may use this cheap commercial balun

         https://www.nooelec.com/store/balun-one-nine.html

         in such a case, pick the balun with the circuitry up and the coax connector toward you, connect the antenna wire to the left hand clip and connect the other clip to a (as short as possible) run of wire going to a good ground, then use a coax to connect the balun to your receiver

         Reply ↓
         1. TomL July 12, 2019 at 4:43 pm

            I have a mini-whip on a tripod I use at the beach, away from any e-field noise. Mini-whips pick up every stray electronic noise possible. A loop would be better for an apartment porch. Just my experience.

            Reply ↓
            1. Andrew July 13, 2019 at 5:43 am

               Well … yes, an activewhip will for sure pick up more noise than a loop, yet the one I suggested has a “tweak” just scroll up to see the simpler circuit and check out the description for the BUFFER circuit 🙂

               Then, at the top of that page there’s also a circuit for a remotely tuned activeloop, but that’s designed to work in the 3 … 30Mhz range, so while I know for sure that it works really well (built a number of those) I’m not sure it may be adapted to work on MW

               As for MW the same link also shows the design for a compact, directional, active ferrite rod antenna, that may be worth a try 🙂
8. Martin Kraft July 11, 2019 at 1:41 pm

   Thanks everyone! You’ve given me some great advice and ideas to try out… at night… when the apartment manager ain’t watching!

   Reply ↓
   1. rtc July 11, 2019 at 6:09 pm

      My experience with an amplified PK loop and a portable did not go well.
      The loop put out too much gain and swamped the portable despite full
      attenuation etc.
      Reducing the loop’s power supply voltage is a workaround but seemed
      rather silly after all the time,effort and expense.
      A passive loop won’t do this.

      Reply ↓
9. Jason July 11, 2019 at 9:15 am

   I might suggest first investing in the necessary adapter, some coax, and a choke of some sort for the far end (e.g., a 1:1 Guanella balun on a small torroid, or just 5-10 clip-on ferrites good for shortwave frequencies). The reason being, that these three things will be necessary/useful for the future amplified loop or magloop, but you could start with just a small dipole hidden in the same place as your random wire, and work up from there. The random wire is likely picking up all sorts of noise from indoors, so by moving the feedpoint outdoors, you benefit from that inverse square law. If the radio is easily overloaded, a short dipole may work best, however, if you experiment with larger dipoles and it works well, then you may be fine with an amplified loop. Lots of experimentation for the cost of a roll of cheap speaker wire and a few minutes time.

   Reply ↓
10. TomL July 11, 2019 at 9:15 am

    Too bad no one has figured out how to create an automatic/remote antenna tuner that does NOT need an illegal transmitter. Then, you could keep using the 10 foot wire outside and tune it to any frequency as needed.

    I use something similar to Chuck Hutton’s broadband idea of a ferrite sleeve loop but the cost and time to build it might be offputting and it does not work as well as a manually tuned loop. https://dxer.ca/articles/92-gary-debock (look at the bottom “Addendum”)

    I also echo Thomas’ observation that the outside wire antenna can work better than an indoor loop. Getting away from the noise is key!

    Reply ↓
    1. RonF July 11, 2019 at 11:57 pm

       “Too bad no one has figured out how to create an automatic/remote antenna tuner that does NOT need an illegal transmitter.”

       How automatic do you want? 😉

       I’m currently in the middle of playing with a prototype autotuner design for my FRG-7700 & ‘passive’ (varicap-tuned) loop. It does require info from the radio though (tuned frequency), which on the 7700 can be derived from the band setting & VFO signal available through the memory unit interface.

       Config is simple – manually-tune the antenna at a couple of spots on each band, & the autotuner records the radio’s bandswitch setting, VFO frequency, & the tuning voltage I’ve dialled up. From that the autotuner’s micro calculates the tuned frequency & derives a curve-fitting function to match frequency to tuning voltage. In regular use the micro reads the Yaesu’s bandswitch & VFO settings, generates the tuning setting required, and drives a DAC to generate the voltage to tune the antenna.

       So far the basic idea seems to be working fairly well, though I need to tweak the hardware & software a bit before I’ll call it finished. The same basic idea should be easily-adaptable to any receiver that has tuning info externally available (e.g. the old Yaesu hardware interface, the serial-based Yaesu CAT / Icom’s CI-V / others) or easily-added (e.g. I reckon the early R-series Kenwood radios would be good candidates), and it wouldn’t be hard to interface it to any other remote-tuned loop or design a controllable antenna tuner to suit a long/random wire antenna.

       Of course, it’s not much use if you’re using a portable without any sort of interface available – but that wasn’t part of your spec… 😉

       Reply ↓
11. 13dka July 11, 2019 at 9:10 am

    The PL-660 has a built-in attenuator that makes it much more apt for high-gain antennas than some other radios, for example the S-8800 (I mentioned that in the review I think). I have used it quite often with the voltage-spitting 8m flagpole at the beach (inductively coupled) and tried it with my dipole, the 60ft passive loop or the ML-200 amplifier with a small (80cm diameter) rigid loop at home. Without the 3rd position on the sensitivity switch it sure would have some trouble with most “large aperture” and active designs.

    That being said – if you can’t run coax to the distant trees (which could have the advantage of getting the antenna away from the nearfield RFI-“halo” surrounding buildings) your other option might be a somewhat bigger, non-resonant (no tuner) passive loop utilizing the geometry of your front porch – maybe you can string up some wire (maybe color matched for extra stealthiness) around the whole thing to form a not-so-small loop? With a sensitive radio like the PL-660, any lack of voltage coming out of such a loop isn’t a big deal and that would be considerably cheaper and more convenient than an active loop you’d have to put up and take it back in.

    Tuned passive loops with remote control are usually even more expensive than active wideband loops, with no benefit for receive-only usaage, so that’s likely not a good option for you.

    Reply ↓
    1. 13dka July 11, 2019 at 9:20 am

       Dang, forgot to add why you may want such a wire loop anyway – even with one side of a quad loop lying on the floor, that contraption will likely perform better than a straight stretch of wire at the same place. Even if you could bring the same length of wire into the air, the low elevation and asymmetric design would likely give you less signal and more RFI pickup.

       Reply ↓

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.