| WA2SI |
Rating:  |
2009-11-13 | |
| Antenna Works |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
This antenna works just fine for me. I know what to expect from both a loop and a bi-square and this antenna delivers just that. I have no unrealistic expectations.
I previously ran a standard 66 ft. doublet, a Carolina Windom 40 LP and an 88 ft. (Cebik) doublet. These are my points of reference.
Oh yeah, my e-mail to Jim, sent after-hours on a national holiday, was returned the very next morning. All of my inquiries over the years have been promptly responded to. |
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| KI9A |
Rating: |
2009-10-21 | |
| Pleasant surprise! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
After years of following reviews on eham, you can pretty quicly seperate the "whiners" from the real radiomen. The whiners think a piece of wire should equal a 100' tower with a yagi. A radioman knows better. A whiner thinks because he is not as much of a mechanic as he thinks he is, it somehow the fault of the company who designed the antenna. A radioman knows better.
I tossed this antenna up for the ILQP las week, up maybe 25', for an antenna to listen for mobiles on a 2nd radio. I quickly noticed I was busting pileups with 100 watts, so, I switched it over to the other rig, and used it with about 700 watts. I've been a ham for long time, and was really surprised at the comments of how strong I was.
Guys, this thing flat out works. Compared to my 135' long dipole at 45', fed with 450ohm ladderline, it is at least as good, most of the time better. Both are broadside N/S. Compared to my GAP Voyager, the loop is WAY better inside of 600 or so miles. Father out, the vertical wins out. As it should.
These old farts saying " you would be better off wanting an antenna, than having this", are so far away from reality, that more than likely they had a bad feedline, or operator error. you can pretty much homebrew one if you want.
73- Chuck KI9A |
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| W8NLZ |
Rating: |
2007-09-25 | |
| Very happy with my SuperLoop 40 |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| Was surprised to hear that some hams have not had good luck with the Radioworks Superloop 40. I have both a Radioworks Carolina Windom 80 and the Superloop and can easily compare the two. In general, on 40 meters, the Superloop 40 is 2 S-units quieter. On 20 meters, they are about the same. However, the Superloop seems to "reach out" much better, both for local and DX contacts. I like it so well, I am thinking about replacing the Windom with a Superloop 80. If you are not getting good results with this antenna, you may have a bad balun. (It is easy to get water in them.) FYI, the flattop of my Superloop is 45 ft high. |
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| K1AF |
Rating: |
2006-03-11 | |
| excellent performer |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I had the Superloop 80, hung between 2 pine trees about 100 feet apart, and hung in a rectangle configuration. Unfortunately it became a casualty in a hurricane. That was my fault. I should have taken the tension off of it, and did not do it. However it was a great performer especially on 40m. I do not understand why some folks don't have similar results with it. I put an antenna analyzer on it when it first went up, and I found the resonant frequencies too low. After removing about 3 feet of wire on each side of the feed point, it came insde the bands nicely. |
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| KA3NXN |
Rating: |
2005-10-02 | |
| Excellent Performance |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I put this up in place of a GAP vertical. There is no comparison. The Super loop is AWSOME! On 40 I generally end up running the net when I check in because my signal is the best on the band. From NY to FL and all the way out to MN. I am told I have the best signal on 40. On 20-10 it is also a great performer. |
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| K3MQ |
Rating:  |
2005-04-19 | |
| Junk |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Pure junk! You are better off wanting an antenna than having one of these. I had the SuperLoop 80, big brother of the 40. No better performance than a G5RV and worse on 40 meters.
If you ever need to email Radioworks, check for return messages after about a week.
The only good part of the whole deal was getting spare parts for building my own wire antenna which is what I should have done to start with.
Maybe if they spent as much time on antenna design and modeling as they do creating hype on their website and catalog they could put out a decent product. |
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| W8MJM |
Rating: |
2005-02-21 | |
| Excellent dummy load |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I put up a Super Loop 40 just to see how it would preform against a home brew windon and a bazooka. It is up 50 feet and I'm feeding it with Rg-213. The loop consistently gives S meter readings 2-5 db lower than the windom and I can hear weak signals on the windom and bazooka that can't be heard on the loop. When warm weather comes to Michigan the loop is going to the junk. |
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| AA2T |
Rating: |
2004-05-13 | |
| Good within limitations |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I found that this is about .5S unit better than my Carolina Windom in same spot at my location for 40M. Quieter as well. At another installation, I found it is better on longer contacts (400-500miles)on 40M during the day than an inv V sitting over a fence. But an S unit down or so for 200 miles. I have almost 300 countries confirmed using it 80% of the time and another wire antenna for the rest. Limitations are that on 30 Meters its ok, but a regular dipole will do better. On 15 Meters, it's pretty deaf due to balun losses and being so far from resonance. On 20 Meters it's an S unit or two better than other wire antennas I have had. However, it's deaf off the ends, so I use another antenna to fill in the coverage holes. For a wire antenna, does fairly reasonable job. Another side benefit is that it can be used for recieve on 160M, and am able to hear EU and S America from east coast US easily and the noise level is really cleaned up. Would be nice if they just added a 15 meter section to it so it worked on that band. I was one of the first users of the antenna when it first came out maybe 7-8 years ago.. Jim did update my balun to a torriodal unit and it helped on higher bands. |
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| N6PC |
Rating: |
2003-08-20 | |
| Works well on 40M |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have SuperLoop 40 installed at 30ft as well as a G5RV at 32ft. I find that the SuperLoop will provide at least two S-units better than the G5RV for the same signal. I have a switch which allows me to compare both antennas quickly. Have been monitoring the 7268.5 nets daily on the west coast and most signals, especially mobiles, are better on the SuperLoop. Coverage is to my northerly and easterly direction, out to about 900 miles during the daytime. Not as quiet as the G5RV, however the additional signal level makes low level signals more understandable. If the power line or static noise gets too high I also can use an SCAF-1 audio filter to reduce the levels. The SuperLoop generally makes the copy of signals much easier. Still experimenting with use on other bands. Overall for a low installation height the antenna works well for me on 40M. |
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| NU5O |
Rating: |
2003-07-13 | |
| 4/5 |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I installed my Superloop 40 in September 2001 at my QTH in Lae, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The transmitting facility is located at the Melanesian Bible College at the foot of a rather large hill to our west, on the western side of Lae. To the south, west, and north, there are significant mountain ranges within 75-100km of our QTH. To the east is ocean.
The antenna is also used by a Canadian Registered Nurse who runs a free primary care facility on the property. She uses it to check into medical nets on HF (outside the amateur bands) in PNG and for SWL listening. Our reference antenna is a RadioWorks Carolina Windom 160. The Windom is mounted about 12 meters in the air and winds through a number of coconut trees. The Superloop is mounted with its top at about 15 meters between two coconut trees and passes over the mission house which has a large metal roof.
Assembly was very easy. We purchased additional pulleys and military style polyprop style rope from Radioworks for the install. Locals ran ropes to the pulleys and attached them at the top of the coconut trees and then another rope up through the pulleys so that I could attach the ends to the antenna on the ground and hoist the whole thing in the air from the ground on each end. We use concrete blocks as ballast to keep tension on the ropes which keeps it in the air. This works very nicely even in strong gusts and rainstorms which are quite common in Lae.
Only one solder joint has to be made. I used some extra "goop" on the matching unit to keep rain out and it has not been a problem. It is a bit tricky to keep tension on everything as you raise the antenna so that it does not kink-but not impossible.
How does it work. Well, 3462 contacts in 1 1/2 weeks on 40M, 30M, 20M, 17M, and 10M should tell the story. It is definitely directional, especially on 17 and 10. There are definitely multiple lobes on 10. We know this because we moved it midstream from one coconut tree to another while listening to some longwinded hams in QSO and could see a 1 S unit rise in signal when we favored their direction. 40, 30, 20 seem to have little directivity. SWR was managed by the rig's tuner (FT-920) on all bands.
In all cases, stations beyond 2500km were much stronger on the Superloop than the windom. As an aside, the comments on the station "in" country on other frequencies indicate it is far superior to the antennas others are using to communicate as we have been told we are one of the "loudest" signals in the country on several nets. Because of the extreme mountainous terrain, one would think then that it also has some high angle radiation going for it.
The antenna meets our criterion for a single multiband antenna that provides adequate communications to the world. It is much preferred over the Carolina Windom 160 which, given its height above ground, yielded no contacts on 160 after much effort, and only about 30 contacts on 80 meters-mostly with Japan.
Its SWR is up and down on each band but we don't care because the FT-920 tuner takes it in stride. It is a light antenna but has been up for almost 3 years in constant rain/windstorms and is doing just fine. Hopefully, we will be able to add a vertical to our setup with metal roof as a counterpoise (20 meters x 15 meters) and compare the antennas further.
73 de
Andy Masters NU5O/P29AM |
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