As a typical apartment dweller antenna restrictions and abundant RFI apply, hence I had to come up with something that would enable me to get good signal quality across most common ham radio bands.

I started off by constructing an adapter cable that would allow me to ad hoc power the Icom 7200 from the car battery, without making a permanent installation to the vehicle.

This set with the jaws allows for a quick connect/disconnect under the hood

and with sufficient length for both the power and RG58 cabling, transceiver can be operated from inside the vehicle while loop antenna is located on the roof

aforementioned antenna being a converted aluminum hula – hula loop with roughly a 1 m. diameter, attached to a MFJ-936B as following pictures indicate

this setup turned out to be quite good, extending beyond its “by design” frequencies as I was able to enjoy good RX even on the 80 meter band, which is certainly not in the comfort zone of a 1-meter loop.

RESULTS

• finally had sufficient signals to focus on transceiver itself
• 80 meters was a major surprise – had not anticipated it with this loop spec
• e.g. on 20 meters I had crisp clear reception from range of at least 2600 km
• learned to tune both the antenna and the transceiver, so that…

…could pretty much duplicate the reception at home with antenna on the balcony!

Outcome of this is that when new to the ham radio or for example specific equipment, it is important to see the effort to have an abundance of signals to work with – different bands, reception types and conditions prevailing

• Increases familiarity with your overall station setup
• Teaches a bunch about the transceiver in particular
• Supports hunting down weaker signals later on at QTH

 

73, de OH2BNF