Though fascinated by the ferrite stick transplants of Gary I have still scruples to alter the outer appearance of my URLs and prefer the passive loop approach.
On Henry's homepage http://homepage.ntlworld.com/henry01 I fell on an small and simple loop antenna that is more than a gadget.
Following his plan and calculations I constructed such a loop of
12" x 9" for LW. For a better Q I built it with foamboard 5mm instead of corrugated cardboard and invested a roll of 60x005 litz wire for 55 turns instead of copper wire.Now having sacrificed so much litz an
air variable tuning cap was mandatory.The result is a relatively small and easy transportable LW antenna. If you are interested I can put a self declaring photo in the photo section.
The performance boost of this "gadget" was far beyond my expectations.
The tuning of the loop is extremly sensitive (small bandwith), so that the reduction drive of the cap is helpful. Average s/n gain is 15-20 db on the PL 380.Here are some day measurements:

Barefoot with loop
162 kHz France Inter 15 01 barely audible 29 25
177 Deutschlandrad. 15 02 not aud. 20 18
207 Deutschlandfunk 15 13 38 25
234 RTL 15 00 barely aud. 28 25
270 Czechsk.Prag 15 00 not aud. 15 18

This PL-380 loop combination is now equal in performance to my
best LW receiver: no, it is not the Sony ICF-2010 it is the sowiet
Selena B212.

Peter K. in Schaffhausen/Switzerland

Hello Peter,

Thanks very much for sharing the details of Henry's compact LW loop with
us, and also the performance report on your new loop's LW sensitivity. The
experiment sounds very interesting, and Henry's loop does seem to provide a
serious boost in LW performance.

The 2000 uh coil LW 7.5" plug-in loopsticks (for the PL-360, PL-380 etc.)
were primarily designed to provide performance competitive with a stock
ICF-2010 on LW, and they do seem to exceed this sensitivity level on the LW
international broadcast band (153-279 kHz), and equal it on the lower NDB
frequencies (up to about 300 kHz).

Inductive coupling to large LW air core loops can certainly provide even
greater ULR performance on the LW band, and one of the designs tested here
was a 6.5' sided LW tuned passive PVC Loop with 22 turns of #18 wire (564'),
which tunes from 148- 374 kHz. It was described in the PVC Loop article
posted at _http://www.mediafire.com/?igw1zjwfzmw_
(http://www.mediafire.com/?igw1zjwfzmw) , and probably would run wild on the LW band (if I had the
time to DX with it :-)


73, Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)




In a message dated 8/9/2010 5:27:00 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.keller@... writes:




Though fascinated by the ferrite stick transplants of Gary I have still
scruples to alter the outer appearance of my URLs and prefer the passive loop
approach.
On Henry's homepage _http://homepage.ntlworld.com/henry01_
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/henry01) I fell on an small and simple loop antenna that is
more than a gadget.
Following his plan and calculations I constructed such a loop of
12" x 9" for LW. For a better Q I built it with foamboard 5mm instead of
corrugated cardboard and invested a roll of 60x005 litz wire for 55 turns
instead of copper wire.Now having sacrificed so much litz an
air variable tuning cap was mandatory.The result is a relatively small and
easy transportable LW antenna. If you are interested I can put a self
declaring photo in the photo section.
The performance boost of this "gadget" was far beyond my expectations.
The tuning of the loop is extremly sensitive (small bandwith), so that the
reduction drive of the cap is helpful. Average s/n gain is 15-20 db on the
PL 380.Here are some day measurements:

Barefoot with loop
162 kHz France Inter 15 01 barely audible 29 25
177 Deutschlandrad. 15 02 not aud. 20 18
207 Deutschlandfunk 15 13 38 25
234 RTL 15 00 barely aud. 28 25
270 Czechsk.Prag 15 00 not aud. 15 18

This PL-380 loop combination is now equal in performance to my
best LW receiver: no, it is not the Sony ICF-2010 it is the sowiet
Selena B212.

Peter K. in Schaffhausen/Switzerland