Sounds of the suburbs part 3.
As discussed before, my home qth has a lot of issues with electrical noise, some of it is self generated (computers and other electrical appliances) and also due to my location in suburbia.
The new receiver we got last weekend the kenwood r-2000, is effected by it as well, but not to the same extent as our other radios. And for the first time I can actually listen to the 80 metre band.
I really do need to get some sort of better antenna for home use, we rarely transmit there, and at the present moment our antena for reception, is a thin wire wrapped around the the edge of a room a couple of times into a 4:1 balun, which while not a good antenna in all honesty, it works well for picking up some stations, on the MW band (am broadcast.) Which to be honest, due to the location and power of the transmitters one could use a damp piece of string for reception.
I’ve been looking at mag loop antennas, which we have already constructed once before (Hannahs and I’s first antenna project a long time ago.) And it’s worked quite well. So I’d really like to look at that again for home use, as mag loop antennas can reduce the interferance that one receives.
The good thing is, where we do most of our HF work, we have the space, and have set up much better antennas, for a number of bands, so I can really do a good comparison of what works and what doesn’t.
The one thing that did have me a little confused we have a vertical built for the 20 metre band, and when using the kenwood r-2000, I found it was a lot better for picking up the long wave beacons than any of our other antennas. Though we have nothing really for below 80 metres so everything is a comprimise.
~Ivy
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