Whats so great about a loop antenna?
T he venerable loop antenna is probably one of the oldest antennas in the history of physics and radio engineering. It was Hertz who first noticed that his “sparks” were transmitted through the air using small loop-like antennas spaced just a few feet apart! Since that glorious beginning, magnetic loops have tended to become the stepchild in the radio family, taking a back seat to their more illustrious siblings, the electric field antennas! So why have loop designs persisted up to today and, even in some cases, outshone their electric-field counterparts? It has to be performance! Loops can do just as well as any other type of antenna, they just need more room! So if you have the space, and even if you don’t have alot of extra space, you might consider the loop to be a very good alternative to the dipole, or even a (Yagi) beam in the amateur HF and VHF bands. What makes the loop different is that it creates a radiation pattern that eventually becomes the same as an electric field anten
