HF loop antenna

HF Portable & Flexible Receive Loop Antenna
Covers HF frequencies (10 kHz to 30 MHz)
Usable on VHF up to 300 MHz as a folded Dipole
Maximum power 250 mW
Passive Design
No Tuning required
Low-Loss Wide-Band BALUN with 0.28 dB loss typ.

Description
Electrically balanced passive loop design with low loss RF transformer to cancel the responses to electric fields.

Ideal for noisy environments where electric-field sensors like the mini-whip antennas are impracticable.

High Performance DX when used with a low noise preamplifier.

High quality 2 meters (approx. 6 feet) transmission line included.

Frequency Range: 10 kHz to 30 MHz
Usable in FM/VHF as a folded dipole up to 300 MHz.
Maximum power: 250 mW
Passive Design
No Tuning required
Low-Loss Wide-Band BALUN with 0.28 dB loss typ.

A New Magnetic Loop Concept

After releasing our award winning Airspy HF+ series and analyzing the feedback from hundreds of customers and enthusiasts, we decided to bite the bullet and design a new antenna to fight the noise in urban environments, leverage the low-noise performance of our SDR receivers while being perfectly portable in a small bag. We came up with the YouLoop, a Loop you can build by Yourself.

Architecture

The YouLoop is a generalization of the Möbius loop where a balanced electric shield is used as the center of a multi-turn loop. The rest of the turns run inside the shield. This construction is electrically balanced for large wave wavelengths, ie. when Lambda is very large compared to the size of the antenna. This helps cancelling the electric noise at the lower bands, exactly where most of the electric noise energy is concentrated. To preserve this electric balance from alteration by the transmission line, a low loss miniature BALUN is used. Neat, isn’t it?

The following diagrams illustrate conceptual architecture described above. The more turns, the higher gain at the lower frequencies. Note that to preserve the electric balance, the number of turns increases by increments of two.

VHF Performance

Another interesting aspect of this two-turns coax build is its response in VHF. The same HF magnetic loop can be used in the FM and the 2m HAM bands with a slight change of its core principle: It’s now a folded dipole. Actually, the feed point of the folded dipole is on the top and the actual legs are composed of the coax ground. At this feed point, the signal is routed through the two coax legs to the wide-band, low-loss BALUN. The gray curved line depicts the signal path in VHF, which should be familiar for most. This makes the antenna perfectly usable for FM Broadcast, Aviation Band and 2m HAM Band; A very welcome option for portable VLF/LF/HF/VHF operation.

VHF Performance

Further Improvements

In order to further improve the impedance matching and flatten the frequency response, a high impedance external pre-amplifier can be used near the antenna to present a constant output impedance to the receiver. We are working on a J-FET low-power pre-amplifier that could help DX’ers with extremely weak signals. This pre-amplifier also allows using a loop with a much smaller diameter, which improves the portability.

Bill of Material

Following the large demand from our customers, we decided to offer the Two Turns version via our distributors network. This could be the best option for those who do not want or cannot build the antenna from scratch. We picked the best quality components and pre-assembled the PCBs with the BALUN so the only remaining action is to connect the SMA cables. The whole antenna can be assembled in a few seconds.