On 22 Jun 2017, at 9:48 am, Matt Patterson <W5llmatt@...> wrote:

Hello,

I'm new to the bitx scene and have recently got my kit up and running. ?Now I'd like to upgrade it to Allard's latest sketch for the raduino. ?I hope I said that right. ?Is there a tutorial somewhere showing the steps on how to accomplish this? ?I'd hate to do something incorrectly and brick my new radio. ?I work on PCs for a living so I'm not a total noob just new to this raduino stuff.

73 Matt
W5LL

Sent from my iPhone 7

If anybody is interested I have a file somewhere that gives dimensions for a "butterfly" capacitor...

?

On Jun 21, 2017, at 1:33 PM, John Smith via Groups.Io <johnlinux77@...> wrote:

I think that was well said all the way around. What do you think of them as receive only antennas, both as a two antenna system, and just for receivers only? If anyone is wondering what I mean by two antenna system, think about the Beverage antenna as receive only, and something else for transmit. This comes to mind because of the loops directivity and high Q, aka, less noise and QRM reception. So, is it equally inefficient at reception??

On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 12:24 pm, Simon Thompson wrote:

The size of loop required above 20 m for any kind of transmission efficiency makes their use highly inefficient. I think they are neat antennas, and interesting in many ways, and I have made and used them myself, but I think of them, literally, as a last resort. Almost anything is better than a mag-loop; I know some people have success making qsos with them, but operators also make qsos with dummy loads. Even a short wire and counterpoise attached to some coax and a balun will work much better than a tuned loop. I know there will be people who reflexively respond to this with their own tales of amazing results, but a larger, more efficient antenna will almost always outperform a smaller, less efficient antenna.

I think that was well said all the way around. What do you think of them as receive only antennas, both as a two antenna system, and just for receivers only? If anyone is wondering what I mean by two antenna system, think about the Beverage antenna as receive only, and something else for transmit. This comes to mind because of the loops directivity and high Q, aka, less noise and QRM reception. So, is it equally inefficient at reception??

On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 12:24 pm, Simon Thompson wrote:

The size of loop required above 20 m for any kind of transmission efficiency makes their use highly inefficient. I think they are neat antennas, and interesting in many ways, and I have made and used them myself, but I think of them, literally, as a last resort. Almost anything is better than a mag-loop; I know some people have success making qsos with them, but operators also make qsos with dummy loads. Even a short wire and counterpoise attached to some coax and a balun will work much better than a tuned loop. I know there will be people who reflexively respond to this with their own tales of amazing results, but a larger, more efficient antenna will almost always outperform a smaller, less efficient antenna.

The size of loop required above 20 m for any kind of transmission efficiency makes their use highly inefficient. I think they are neat antennas, and interesting in many ways, and I have made and used them myself, but I think of them, literally, as a last resort. Almost anything is better than a mag-loop; I know some people have success making qsos with them, but operators also make qsos with dummy loads. Even a short wire and counterpoise attached to some coax and a balun will work much better than a tuned loop. I know there will be people who reflexively respond to this with their own tales of amazing results, but a larger, more efficient antenna will almost always outperform a smaller, less efficient antenna.

On Jun 21, 2017, at 11:22 AM, John Smith via Groups.Io <johnlinux77@...> wrote:

I like the calculator, i've seen it before but lost it and have been using a software version by KI6GD. I have it bookmarked now, thanks.

What I am seeing is a 40M band loop with 90+% efficiency, needs 30 feet of 2" copper tubing.

I currently have RG8X coax on a VHF ground plane antenna which gives me about 30% loss. It's a different system than BITX'ers and HF ops use, but comparatively speaking, if a mag loop has that much loss on 40, I wouldn't bother making it.

I am really getting the impression that mag loops are better suited for 20 and above. Does anyone concur?

i have added a button for a tunning button
after that i got nothing so i thought i'd wire the whole cw wiring
I got them all following instructions
button still does nothing

the only one i didn't wire was pin15 to that transistor as inam not going
to use cw

by the way, any hint why it doesn't work the carrier button (brown wire
from p1)