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SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2016 10:33 pm
by Umanyar
I am trying to get more mileage out of my RSP for SWL. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with the following SWL antennas?

1. alpha delta's DX-SWL
2. Par electronics EF-SWL

It would be great if anyone has these antenna's specifically or something similar rigged up with the RSP, would be wondering how effective these antennas are.


Thank you

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2016 2:33 pm
by CaptainNemo
I suppose my DIY random wire is
Umanyar wrote:...something similar...
to EF-SWL.
It is a 10meters piece of wire with a 9:1 toroidal transformer and a coax feed line of 25 meters
Despite this long feed line I have no attenuation problem with RSP.
Also I used 75ohm tv-sat coax and F connectors and -- again -- despite impedance mismatch
with RSP there is signal to sell.
This antenna is rigged on the roof (at 25 meters over sea level). Due to security constraint the antenna is rigged
only 2-3meters over the roof (I was not allowed to use longer poles).

Considering all the above limitations, this is my only antenna from 300k to 30M, and I have a lot of fun with it.
I've copied near all kind of tx (NDB, HAM, MWARA, VOLMET, HFDL, SLB, CODAR, OTHR, BC, COASTAL STATIONS, UTILITY, etc. etc. etc.).

Bye
Gio

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 5:39 am
by Umanyar
This is good news. Happy to hear a similar wire has so much success with the RSP. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 10:17 pm
by sdjack
I have very good results with a mini whip, up from 10khz.

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:39 pm
by rgood123
HI to all.
This homemade longwire antenna works great it improved my reception on 80meters to 10meters " 20 OVER " on my sdrplay.
and very inexpensive to construct.
Good Luck

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2016 10:45 am
by CaptainNemo
Hi rgood123, you gave me a good idea to experiment!!!
(My diy balun primary winding has one end connected to the random wire and the other end is grounded to the metal pole -- this is the mostly reported schematic in the net).
Gio

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 7:39 pm
by PA2EM
I hope future models will include a 9:1 un-un (balun) and a longwire connection (in addition to the SMA). It enables using any wire for reception up to 50mHz. http://m0ukd.com/homebrew/baluns-and-un ... alun-unun/

With the same set up, you could ad three wire terminals: 1:4 1:9 1:16 to give more length / band flexibility
http://www.radioamatoripeligni.it/i6ibe ... lun9a1.pdf

For reception only these can be made much smaller. You can buy a cheap small external one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/100K-50MHz-RTL- ... SwEK9W~fST

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 10:49 pm
by n6dnm
Thanks rgood123!!! Sometimes simple approach is the best one. I have tried quite a few combinations before - with folded dipole, center fed, simple long wire (single) with 1:1 and 9:1 UnUns - this one comes out the cleanest and stations that i could only sense now come in low but clean. For me it was not 20 fold improvement, but quite significant one - let's just say noise floor dropped from S4 to S1 and strong signals have improved by a few S's. Thanks again and can't wait how far i can get listening.

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:54 am
by CaptainNemo
The "configuration" proposed by rgood123 has a name?
There is some documentation available in internet?
Thanks in advance.
Gio.

Re: SWL longwire antenna

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2016 4:01 pm
by rgood123
A dipole antenna with 90 degree radials to each other,I believe is called a Quadrant antenna.
Don't known much about the design.
I can say it works well.