Category: Amateur Radio

Ted Hart inspired interest in loops for transmitting applications with his article “Small, high efficiency loop antennas” (Hart 1986).

He included a table of recommended designs, the following is an extract of the table rows relating to an octagonal loop with perimeter=20′ (6.1m). The tube specified was 3/4 copper pipe which has an OD of 22mm. Continue reading Reconciling W5QJR’s loop formulas

(Boswell et al 2005) discussed a small transmitting loop (STL) and offered predictions and measurements of performance.

Boswell’s loop is 1m diameter of 22mm diameter copper tube.

This article is a reconciliation of Calculate efficiency of vertically polarised antenna from far field strength with Boswell’s predictions, measurements and efficiency calculations.

Above, Fig 6 from Boswell shows his prediction of the field strength of a 100% efficient loop at several distances, and measured field strength. He calculated efficiency from the difference between predicted lossless and measured. Continue reading Reconciliation of field strength to efficiency calculator with Boswell’s loop measurements

There are a host of design tools for Small Transmitting Loops, spreadsheets, online calculators and conventional applications you download and run on your PC.

Almost all ignore capacitor loss… and I say almost so that I am not wrong, I have never seen one of these tools that does include capacitor loss.

NEC study of Small Transmitting Loop Q vs frequency contained a graph of the elements of feed point resistance from and NEC-4.2 model for a small loop. Key parameters are:

• Octagonal loop of 20mm copper with area equal to that of a 1m diameter circle, loop perimeter=0.104λ at 10MHz;
• centre height=2m;
• Qcap=2000;
• ground=0.007/17; and
• freq=1-10MHz.

This analysis only extends up to 10MHz, because for perimeter>λ/10, the formulas used by most of these simple calculators are in error for other reasons.

Above, the four elements on log scale. Continue reading On ignoring capacitor losses in Small Transmitting Loops

Recent comments elsewhere on the shape of the plot of measured Q from (Austin et al 2014) gave reason to explore the behaviour of Q for a ‘good’ Small Transmitting Loop (STL) using an NEC-4.2 model.

The term Small Transmitting Loop means a loop sufficiently small that there is not a significant departure from smaller loop behaviour. Essentially this is true for perimeter less than about λ/10.

NEC-4.2 model

Key parameters are:

• Octagonal loop of 20mm copper with area equal to that of a 1m diameter circle, loop perimeter=0.104λ at 10MHz;
• centre height=2m;
• Qcap=2000;
• ground=0.007/17; and
• freq=1-10MHz.

This is a quite practical small transmitting loop with current that is approximately uniform around the loop. Continue reading NEC study of Small Transmitting Loop Q vs frequency