K9AY is a loop
developed in the early 1990's by American radio amateur Gary Breed (K9AY).
Since then DXers, ham operators and comerical enterprises, all have raved
and ranted about this loop,
calling it "miraculous", "stunning" and the
antenna that beats anything.
I used the 4 SQ last year
for an few weeks but I wasn't satisfied with it, I compared it against
the beverage's and they looked dead. I know you may not expect the same
signals, but this was nearly nil. So I thought first maybe the ground area
is the problem. But I had the same this year and thought again this can't be
thru, so I went out to the field and checked the coax cable...and saw that
the coax connector was off the coax (so no wonder it was dead). I repaired
it and the K9AY came to live, I had some problems with the F/B but heard
from Johan (PA5A) that he added some extra radials under the loops. And this
worked ok for me too. I am also very happy with the new
switch box ....have this already an few years in use for the beverage's and
works great so I spoke with my friend Be (PA3AOT) who made also this switch
...if it was possible to make such a' switch for the K9AY loop. And
this was no problem, so after an week the prints for the switch and the
outdoor relaybox were ready for building. After some days testing on the
bench it was ready for the field test, and that went all well.
Have it now ready for 2
weeks and it works great...thanks Be for this excellent job.
While commercial K9AY can be bought at a' price, this loop can easily be
homemade at low costs.
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