Magnetic Loop. Calculator.

This is dedicated to everyone interested in building or learning Magnetic Loop Antennas, or MagLoops.

There is a lot of articles and videos on the Internet about building, tuning, and designing MagLoops. Using the link below you can navigate to the Magnetic Loop Calculator - very simple yet useful tool allowing you to be one step closer to be the owner of the MagLoop.

HF 70 watts power amplifier DIY kit. Part 1.

Some time ago I ĥave bought a DIY kit - the 70 watts HF power amplifier. The reason for buying is simple: I have a low power transceiver (20 watts) and sometimes it is required to make it stronger to reach more distant stations not being able to hear my quiet voice. And although 70 watts is not dramatically bigger than 20, I decided to buy it - the price is reasonable and the overall complexity of joining all together is pretty low. 

Ground plane height and overall efectiveness

In my previous post, I have shown the Ground Plane antenna for 80 meters. It was designed to use the 16.5 meters tall mast. There on the market higher masts do exist. For example, it's not a problem to buy 19.2 meters semi-telescopic aluminum mast. I changed the model to see how big is the difference between the two antennas built on 16.5 and 19.2 meters tall masts.

Open, Short, Load... OSL calibration.

If you have some kind of VNA you have to be sure your measurements are correct. And this is true: the non-calibrated tool always returns incorrect data regardless of how nice and correctly do they look. To avoid such an inaccuracy of measurements you have to calibrate your device first. There is a well-known procedure named OSL calibration. The OSL calibration is being made against the cable used to measure some device. This is required to subtract the cable from the results of measurements. This is why you have to store results of calibration to separate files (if your device allows you to do this) and then use the corresponding file accordingly.

Ground Plane for 80 meters without tuner.

Being a HAM for years I always thought of an efficient antenna. My current goal is to make the effective antenna for 80 meters so that I could spend long winter evenings on listening to DXes. I'm living in a private house in the heart of the big city and not able to hang out wire antennas at enough height. Although my experiments with ground standing masts and wire antennas have shown me some positive result I decided to build the one-band GP.

New measurement device on my desk - OSA103mini

Some time ago I have bought a small but reliable device named OSA103mini. This one is a contemporary all-in-one device allowing you:

• watch the form of signals up to 200 MHz in real time or up to 10 GHz in stroboscopic mode.
• generate signals up to 50 MHz (with the unevenness of the amplitude-frequency characteristic less than 0.5 dB).
• measure frequency (8 digits)
• analyze the specter (using FFT, up to 1 GHz)
• VNA
• LC meter
• SDR transceiver