Top Performance from the Home Brew 80M Delta Loop

Since I erected my latest home made wire antenna which was the full wave 80m Delta Loop, I have spent quite a lot of time down on 40M & 80M experimenting with the new loops performance. The loop tunes up well from 160M through to 15M with the MFJ-969 ATU and is resonant for 80M at around 3.5 MHz. It is slightly on the long side for the band as I will be operating mainly on the phone portion higher up the band with some occasional psk31 down on 3.583 MHz.

The immediately obvious improvement that I noticed first, was the clean receive and clear sounding signals that I am now receiving across all of the HF bands. The Loop also provides minimal noise levels compared with the previous Dipole and G5RV antennas. Since the installation I have had a good couple weeks to give it some stick and the tests have been interesting as well as rewarding as I worked some DX Call signs whilst using the new Delta Loop.

The Loop antenna seems to put out a good signal which has been noted to have improved significantly on the previous dipole according to G3OFA, whom I have worked a few times recently on the #TWNET (Twitter Radio Net). So far on 40M, I have worked DX such as, N2QQF, W4NP as well as 6W/GM4FDM and on 80M, I also got across the pond with the loop working W3JK and K1NIU both on 3.795 MHz.

I have been working plenty of G-Stations as well as into Europe with good reports from 80M to 17M and also managed a local net on 160M, which was a first for me as I have never managed to tune up any antennas for top band before. I shall be continuing to experiment with the 80M Delta Loop and comparing it with the smaller 20M Delta loop and Hustler 6BTV. In the meantime have a great Weekend and many DX!

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