A single turn loop, simple and easy

by Jean Marie Polard - F5VLB

The realization of a simple and effective antenna to start in VLF or if you have a reduced
space. With a few copper tubes, a ferrite core and some accessories you can reproduce this
antenna without problem.

The finished antenna.

If you plan to build a single turn loop you need :

4 lengths of copper tube of 10 or 12mm OD, 1 meter long

4 ea 90° elbow
welding kit
one junction box fitted with three cable glands
one toroid with 100 turns of 0,3mm wire
enameled copper wire

All parts should be cleaned and ready to be assembled. This will be done later as we
have to prepare the toroid first
This antenna is a short circuited loop, with a balun 1/100. It has less sensitivity to noise
than other antennas. The toroid has to be efficient up to 100KHz minimum.
I found my toroid into an old pc power supply.

We have to check how is responding the toroid in frequency. To do that you need a
digital voltmeter (in mV AC position) a signal generator (or the soundcard if you work
under 24KHz and a software like SpectrumLab or Daqarta).
The principle is to make to windings on the toroid like on the picture hereunder. You have
to do it twice, one on the right and one on the left of the toroid.
Note : you have to The idea is to inject at one side the signal
wind three turns of
thread to the left and from the generator and to measure the AC
right of the tore. One
side to inject the
signal at the opposite side with the DVM in
signal, the other to AC Volt range. I started at 1KHz to stop
measure it.
around 100KHz. Your DVM can go up to
200KHz in AC mode.

The curve obtained looks like this one. One can see the PC toroid is ok up to 200KHz then
fall.

I have done the same measure with a toroid, yellow white. Less mV, saturation @ 100KHz

Toroids are color coded. Have a look at this web link for more information
http://toroids.info/

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notice ! Take care at the ID. If you have a copper tube of 12mm OD it should be able to
pass into the ID once the copper wire is in place !!!!
Let us examine how to mount the toroid on the tube.

The antenna loop will be in short circuit on itself. Once you have wired the 100 turns of
0,3mm copper wire on the toroid. Wire diam is not important, the main thing is to have it
isolated. As one can see, I put some heat shrink sleeve on the copper tube to really isolate
the winding from the tube.
Now we assemble all together
1/ pass one tube into one cable gland
2/ pass the tube into the toroid
3/ output the tube at the other cable gland
Yes I know it is stupid to say that, but if you do a mistake, once the copper tube is welded,
a nightmare to come back …..
Then you have to weld the copper tube all together. You will need stripping paste, solder, a
soldering lamp and a damp cloth. The wet cloth is to wind on the copper tube, plastic box
side to prevent it melting!You are supposed to be able to do it, else try to find a plumber to
do that for you.
The result is like on the photo hereabove. You just have to add one coax cable at the two
ends of the windings and send it to you radio shack. In the same box, I installed the OP27
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preamplifier, described hereunder. I proceeded also with some tests with already made
and available on the net audio preamplifiers. This will be another article. Here is the
Renato Romero preamplifier

The low noise preamplifier

(http://www.vlf.it/minimal/minimal.htm)

The preamplifier is easy to build and doesn't represents any typical difficult
normally present in RF realisations. Frequency range is so low that we need only
to take care at the connections and following the scheme.
The operation amplifier works in current, and put the loop connection in a virtual
short circuit. The current value is limited by the loop resistance, and the gain
comes from the ratio between 1 MOhm resistance and the loop impedance (Gain
= 1000000/1800 = 555, or 55 dB). With this gain value we can connect the
output directly to the Sound Blaster line input, without needed others devices.
Our loop work in the range 1-100 Hz below the frequency cut, then it doesn't
work in reactive zone but in resistance zone: then we can consider it as a voltage
generator with a 1800 Ohm series resistance.
The VK200 is a classical RF block of some µH, to prevent cross modulation by LF
and long wave signals on the integrated circuit. The 2200 µF electrolytic capacitor
in input couples the loop with the amplifier, cutting the DC current: I've done
different tests about, finding that cutting the DC many troubles connected with
drifting and temperature changing disappear; the device results more stable.
Same functions for the others two 2000 µF capacitors.

The 4.7 nF capacitor works as low pass filter: the value hasn't been chosed for
flatting the frequency response, but with the purpose to obtain a reduced
dynamic range in frequency spectrum. Using these values the received spectrum

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of the Schumann Resonances and the range up to 100 Hz appear almost flat: this
helps the spectrograms reading, underlining immediately the presence of
anomalous signals different from natural background noise.
Due to the very weak signals going out of the loop the suggestion is to put the
preamplifier directly on the loop. The output then can be connected to the remote
PC from the preamplifier with a long coaxial cable. I also tested a twisted pair
telephone cable for a distance of 70 m, with no evident differences respect the
coaxial solution.

Once the antenna is finished, it is time to use it. I use a Behringer UMC202, but
any external sound card is perfect for the application. The output of the
preamplifier feed this external sound card. Thanks to Spectrum lab I obtained this
scan of end of night/ beginning of the day variations.
Thanks to F6AGR Jean Louis and Renato Romero for their help

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If you like this description, it's time to get started and take your first steps. I received this
idea from F6AGR Jean-Louis, he uses it for a long time and makes some nice
measurements. Personally for a year I only use this antenna for monitoring VLF stations.