I've been thinking about building the LZ1AQ loop amplifier described here: https://www.lz1aq.signacor.com/docs/wsml/wideband-active-sm-loop-antenna.htm . Does anyone have experience with one? It seems to get good reviews and looks not too difficult to construct. I'm trying to lay out the parts placement now in Blender for point-to-point wiring.
I have a simpler 2-transistor design (M0AYF) built, but the gain on that antenna is a bit too low for my needs. I hope to use the LZ1AQ antenna in combination with my RTL-SDR + HF upconverter, which has been lying idle for a while.
I am currently building one, starting with the biastee first. Prior to that, I worked on the simulation for several weeks.
When I am done, I will share to the FB group "Active Loop Antennas For SW, MW and LW Listeners"
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I bought an MLA-30+ (plus) 0.5~30MHz Ring Active Receive Antenna Wave SDR Loop Radio Antenna. It worked pretty good but in comparison to a straight wire that I hooked up outside my window the wire was actually a little better for shortwave I took 100 feet of 16 gauge wire and put it in a tight loop about 6 feet high, only about 2 inches wide. I mounted it right outside my window. I did this I did this just for just for curiosity to see what would happen. It worked awesome.
I did a comparison between the wire and the MLA 30 and they were about the same. The wire might have been a little bit better. In my area the Canadian time broadcast at 3333 megahertz is really weak and hard to receive so it's a good test for me. It came in pretty good with the wire on my RTL-SDR Blog V3 R860 RTL2832UR, It's an OK SDR., good for seeing the whole spectrum, but not vert sensitive. My homebuilt radios work better. The homebuilt radios work great on the wire, on the MLA-30+ , not as well. Less noise on the wire.