What a difference!

This is one fantastic antenna with a remote tuner. After using a vertical for many years, I was concerned about the loop’s narrow bandwidth and wondered if I’d be incessantly tuning. My concerns would be answered after a few week’s lead time waiting on the antenna.

It arrived nicely packed, in perfect shape, and I had it assembled in less than 20 minutes. It’s a very easy build onto a 5′ aluminum pole with a lightweight rotor that I purchased for this project. After all cabling was attached to the loop, tuner, and rotor, I applied the supplied power unit to the remote control and listened to the plates of the capacitor open and close successfully as I pressed the remote control’s red and green buttons. Connectors were weatherproofed and onto the roof it went.

I placed my IC-7300 on 20 meters and attempted to tune the loop to resonance. The controller has a potentiometer on the top that varies the tuning speed. Doing what any other red-blooded man would do, I turned the pot all the way to the right and started tuning. Don’t do that. I went back and forth a few times missing the resonant point because it goes so fast. The pot was turned back to mid-dial and I began to tune, watching my waterfall. As you reach your frequency, you will hear the noise level come up and the waterfall will “brighten”. In my case, I could also see a slight “arching” in the noise floor where the resonance was. On 10-40 meters I was able to tune the antenna until the SWR was almost flat. On 20 meters, where SWR is the highest, it’s only 1.3:1. I’m very impressed. I changed the dial to 10 meters and tuned to where there were some DX calls and I jumped into the pileups. Europe, Central, and South America returned my calls with no issues using 100w on my end. The amount of times I needed to tune was not an issue for me as the bandwidth was pleasantly wide for a loop.

In my case, when the speed knob was adjusted to slow down the tuner, I noticed an introduction of what appeared to be DC noise on the spectrum. To mitigate that, I put a mix 31 ferrite on the control cable that goes up to the tuner. It knocked out most of the noise and tuning is easy.

In conclusion, I am very satisfied with this antenna. It quiets the band, you can use the slight null on the sides to mitigate a noise source, and its size accommodates HOA concerns, if that is an issue. Whenever I had any questions, the owner Steve personally answered them and I never felt rushed. The customer service is second to none. They stand by their products.

73,
Chris, W4LUC

MORE INFORMATION

More reviews on the Base MagLoop Antenna

See the Base Loop Antenna

View all Product Customer Reviews

Open Alpha Antenna Home Page