Constructing and Using Loop Antennas for HF – Rael M0RTP

Our May group meeting this week was a special event as Rael Paster, M0RTP our guest speaker, an expert on HF Loop Antennas (although he wouldn’t admit to it) kindly offered to present his excellent talk on the construction, tuning and use of Loop Antennas for HF.

Loop Antennas for operating on HF have been an interest to many of our members, especially those with limited outdoor or garden space, and Rael demonstrated that the Loop Antenna could not only be the answer to this, but would also allow us to achieve some incredible DX results across the HF bands.

Using easily acquired 28mm Copper Pipe, joints and some soldering skills, a Loop Antenna can be constructed, needing only minimal additional components, although for high power usage and for tuning across the HF bands these could be rather large. Rael also explained how to build and set a Loop Antenna to avoid QRM and tune it to lower the overall noise floor substantially while maintaining high received signal levels.

On behalf of all at Bracknell Amateur Radio Club, I would like to thank Rael M0RTP for an interesting, informative and entertaining presentation and look forward to seeing some of the antennas constructed by our members in the near future.

In 2018, Rael presented his talk at the RSGB Convention and a video of the full presentation can be viewed below.