Quote:
Originally Posted by carnivalpete
Re: The Best GDO Ever Made?
I am listener only, and largely on an old 888A on the old amateur bands 10-160m. So, assuming that I can find one, and that money is no object (I wish), what ideally should I buy to help set up my aerials.
All comments gratefully received. pete
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As you say, for reception, a good match isn't critical and an aerial tuner unit to peak up the received signal is about as much as you can do. For most of us, with small suburban gardens with limited space for aerials, there's no magic solution. When I was still into amateur radio I had a rotatable homebrew mini beam, a 'Cobwebb', an inverted 'V' trapped dipole, and a multi band ground mounted vertical which covered 1.8MHz - 30MHz. The mini beam had a slight edge on the others. They weren't general coverage aerials for short-wave listening, they were for the harmonically related amateur bands.
Verticals can be good for DX due to the low angle of radiation. Can be troublesome for causing TVI - spraying RF into neighbours tellies, but for reception only, that's not an issue. Sandpiper multi-band verticals seem to offer good performance at sensible prices.
At the time that I was active on amateur radio, as most my aerials were home-brew, I had an MFJ Antenna Analyser which shows the resonant frequency and standing wave ratio, but it wouldn't make much sense to buy one just for reception purposes. You did say. 'If money was no object' and we're that so, here's what the current model does and what it costs:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/15220074225...D1419548870527
It may seem a lot of money, but people with deep pockets happily spend that much on a wire dipole antenna they could make for a tenth of that.
For general listening (rather than ham bands only) from LW to 30MHz, for my money, the Gary Tempest homebrew amplified loop aerial takes some beating, for lifting the signal level and for low background noise.
As to GDOs, the dial calibration is rarely accurate enough to be sure what frequency the dip is at, so I always checked the dip with a frequency counter loosely coupled to the GDO coil.
Just my thoughts, which I hope are of interest.