I’ve got my amateur radio license when I was in high school. even though I fully understand the science behind it, being able to hear those week sounds that originate from a far away place, might be even a different continent, walks magic on me. but for way to many years I wasn’t really active with this hobby.
One of the main reasons is the space needed to set up an HF antenna. for most of my adult life I’ve been living in apartment buildings. a simple dipole would require hanging 10 meters of wire would mean getting permission to access to the roof and a running a long coax. putting a beam antenna was really out of the question. so I started looking for some small antenna and found out about magnetic loops. these antenna are about 1 meter in diameter and would fit nicely in my balcony. the disadvantages are the narrow bandwidth that requires you to re-tune every frequency change, and the air-gap tuning capacitor which limits the amount of power you can use. (more…)
