Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Rob, who writes:
Thank you for your informative blog. As a longtime SWLer I enjoy reading up on your posts.
A few months ago I was considering the purchase of a magnetic loop antenna. Based on your “YouLoop is a freaking brilliant passive loop antenna” article, and the fact that I live in a fairly noisy RF environment, I made the purchase.
Since doing so I’ve been having plenty of fun with the YouLoop hanging in my loft. I have it connected to an Airspy HF+ Discovery.
I’ve made a couple of videos which I popped up on YouTube which show the YouLoop in action.
The first video shows a mix of utility and broadcast reception on HF.
The most recent explores LF & VLF.
Perhaps these would be of interest to readers, like me, who had seen your initial reviews and had been considering purchasing.
Thank you for turning me onto this little antenna, and keep up the great work in your blog!
Kind regards,
Rob (Frugal Radio)
Excellent videos, Rob, thank you for sharing! The YouLoop is an incredibly effective antenna when combined with a receiver that has a high dynamic range.
Readers, if you’d like to check out more of Rob’s videos and and subscribe to his YouTube channel, click here!
If you’d like to purchase an AirSpy YouLoop for a whopping $35, click here to view a list of distributors.
I would expect the loop to have a lower noise floor- but not because of any magic in the loop. It has a LOT lower gain than your wire antenna. One cannot make any judgment about noise floor until one takes into account the difference in gain. The defining metric is the signal to noise ratio. In the plots you show, I see little or no difference in the signal to noise ratio. BTW, what AirSpy calls a balun (whose function is to reduce common mode p/u on the feeder) is not a balun at all, but just a simple transformer.
Regards,
Dale W4OP
I wonder how, the “ncpl” compares to a passive loop like (say) http://www.kk5jy.net/rx-loop/ a comparison would at least give some more infos about performances
The unknown signals are coming from https://www.efr.de/efr-system/
DCF77 is located at Mainflingen, not Mainhausen.