One of the nice things about the Switchboard (it is a board with a bunch of switches on it – right?) is the ability to choose between 5 different antennas without having to disconnect and reconnect coax. That gets really old really fast. Bruce – 5 different antennas – REALLY?? Isn’t there one antenna that is the best for SWL (Short Wave Listening)? Let me give you the short and long answer both – no there is not. Now if I left it right there – the answer doesn’t make a lot of sense. Another factor to consider is how much of exactly what YOU are wanting to listen to . . . For example – when I typing this post (2300 UTC-Thursday-08/06), I have the SDRPlay DX tuned to 7.163mHz LSB and the best antenna to grab this mornings chat group right now today is the vertical antenna. Tomorrow it may be the loop on ground – the next day the horizontal random wire – SWL is a lot like real estate. Real estate is about 3 primary things – location/location/location — Short wave listening is about 3 primary things – conditions/conditions/conditions. A given antenna under the right conditions WILL outperform other antennas on a given day . . .
So the qualified answer is NO – there simply does not exist a single “best” SWL antenna for all frequencies and all conditions . . .
So thus we end up with this thing . . .
The biggest thing is figuring out which antenna is going to work best at the time. The powered loop from DX Engineering works really good most of the time – at times the loop on ground with the low noise amplifier is an incredible performer – the ability to switch between different antennas on the fly is way cool.
Two of the SDR’s I use are single antenna inputs (the Airspy HF+ Discovery and the SDRPlay 1B) – which means I need to switch between 5 different antennas into one connection – and yes there are 5 to 1 switches out there – good ones start at about $160 and go north from there, using a 3 to 1 and a 2 to 1 and switching between them is about $90 – comparatively cheaper to do the same thing, which is switching between antennas to see which one at a given frequency/conditions is going to give the best performance while not having to swap coax out – YAY!
The other 2 SDR’s – the SDRPlay DX and DX-R2 have 3 software switchable inputs . . .
One antenna goes to A and one to B – C goes to a three way switch (loop on ground/vertical/discone) – again 5 different antennas and no swapping coax – YAY!
The next(?) part is getting all the grounding in place – the #6 copper you see running across there goes outside to an 8 foot ground rod which is tied into all the grounding side of everything and does indeed make a difference . . .
And then get all the computers grounded – and so on – it all make little bitty differences which adds up to noticeable differences . . .
Before that happens I need to get the incoming coax and the connections to the “board” straightened out . . .
The next part is adding or piggy backing 3 more amplified splitters to the amplified loop/horizontal random wire/loop on ground antennas so I can get my networked SDR and a portable or desktop radio hooked up.
Not having to swap out coax continuously really adds to the enjoyment factor. It has been suggested by several of you folks that I should start posting some of the “listening” I do on YouTube – yea no – not that it wouldn’t be cool – I simply have enough stuff going on at the moment. Maybe over winter I will seriously look into it – and who knows – maybe a couple of you – and we all know who you two are – will string up a wire and start paying attention to what’s going on around you . . .
Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!
Guns, Fun, Food and More 