Ahhh so mounting it on the plastic pipe was okay. But maybe too close to the metal dish.

Please see here: www.pa3fwm.nl/technotes/tn07.html

Get well soon 🙏

You’re welcome Tim, that’s hopefully the way my videos are, straight to the point with no fluffing about :)

Thanks! 10-80 endfed will be way better :-)

Thank you :)

Hey, thanks for the comment :) The university installation looks to work really well on the live websdr.

Thanks for comment Pat, maybe I need to give this another go but with a decent ground. :)

@@TechMindsOfficial Grounding is cruzial for this antenna. ground at the bottom of the pole and where it enters your house. The ground at the house is for eliminating man made noise to come into your receiver picked up by the cable. Dont expect a fantastic signal level, a wire can give more signal, but its all about signal to noise ratio, much more important.

The coax was grounded as it comes into the shack via a 4 foot copper rod driven into the ground. Maybe I just need to ditch the long piece of wire and get it above the house. Interesting how the university in the Netherlands have installed theirs and it’s working amazingly. See link in description if you havnt seen it.

OK, I've tried three Mini-Whips. I can't give you measurements because I lack the tools to do so, but I can give you my impressions. All three behaved very differently. One gave a weak signal that seemed no better than my long-wire antenna; one had good sensitivity and 3IP performance (that's the one I built from a kit), and one was very sensitive but poorly selective and kept piling signals on top of one another. That last one piled a Spanish station on top of a Japanese station in the 160 meter band and I could not separate the two. I'm still very new to SDRs generally so there may be some method to this that I've not learned yet, but I was not expecting three "identical" antennas to have such obviously different outputs with the same radio. As always, YMMV.

It’s 10m long, and it was just picked out of hat, no calculations to the length.

You’re welcome :)

Excellent! Let us know how you get on with it.

@@TechMindsOfficial Ok, I am a retired theoretical mathematician and not an RF engineer, so having kc2wvb as my call sign for over a decade, and once having mucked around with Yaggi antennas, plus all the helpful advice given on this page I tried the following when I received my pre-assembled mini whip kit. Using the dipole I strung up in the basement that by using a pair of wires for each element with each pair soldered at the far ends to increase impedance to near 50 ohms otherwise it would be near 25 ohms due to only 8 feet off the ground as the comparison I tuned in 41 meters on my RSP1-A. I then found a European station broadcasting in AM mode. I then disconnected the wire that feeds outdoors off an impedance transformer located indoors from the transformer and connected it to the short solid wire I soldered to the antenna input pad on the mini whip using a short alligator clip type lead or jumper for the connection. Note, the wire that leads outdoors is a distinct end fed antenna and not the 40 meter dipole and is far from ideal in that while being a solid aluminum electric fence wire it angles upwards 8 feet before running horizontal for 20 feet thus it's essentially at best NVI with a weird impedance determined both by frequency, & being end fed & being close to the ground where it never provided much even when connected to the impedance transformer, but it was all I had available at the time. I then connected roughly 15 to at most 20 feet of thin stranded wire to the ground input on the mini whips PCB and using it as essentially a counterpoise tossed it around the room like drunken spagehtti. I then switched from my dipole to the Frankenstein assembly I cobbled together utilizing the mini whip. At first nothing good, actually far worse than with the dipole using essentially NVI for its reception. I then noticed that the short wire I had soldered to the mini whip as a connection point for attaching antennas of different types was hanging alongside the mini whips PCB. I then straightened it so it ran out and away from the PCB and did so for the ground counterpoise as well. Wala, amazing difference. The signal was now very, very strong and in the waterfall you could easily see the footprint of the interval of spectrum the station was using in its broadcast. My conclusion is yes, the mini whip can work wonders for sure, but one might say it's a bit finicky as to what is required, but in a sense any antenna that is efficient with respect to frequency is finicky too. I think I will place the mini whip higher, but indoors with a wire running out a window to a TV mast along with thin coax running down to the receivers I have and definitely include the counterpoise because without one gets a nice constant noise floor and nothing else. Again, at first disappointed then after adjustments very impressed. Footnote: my kit came with a distinct or separate PCB configured among other things as the device often called the Bias T device and has a input for 9 volts DC. I found the Bias T on/off button in SDRUNO will provide the same as the battery thus battery not actually required.

Added: Since I last posted I have made a few changes and I am indicating what I did below. Before I do: there seems to be a lot of anotedotal information on the internet and not being an EE or specifically an RF engineer it's been a bit of trial an error too see what works best thru experimentation. Some of the information is from electrical engineers and one has been successful with no added wire to the antenna pad located on the PCB. However, what I settled on is I mounted both the power supply board and the active antenna to the wall several feet from my transceivers on a floor at grade level. I than ran a magnet wire, forgot the gauge, from the antenna pad on the PCB straight up thru an opening in the floor above to the top of a casement window located on the upper floor. This vertical distance is roughly 12 feet. I then went outside horizontal to grade for roughly 20 feet until I hit the corner of a second floor outdoor deck. I then had the wire take a right angle bend for roughly 24 feet or the length of the deck and tied off the wire on a baluster at both the end point and at the right angle transition. I also have a very light wire about 20 feet long attached to the ground on the PCB and it's just laid in a random fashion on the floor. How did this work. Wonderfully on 49 to 30 metters, OK on 75/80 meters and not terribly effective at 20 meters and above. On medium wave it is OK but I am spoiled from having a purpose built mag loop antenna for Medium Wave. Incidentally, I tried the Mini Whip with no additional wire added to the antenna pad and had some luck at 49 meters but nothing compared to now where the stations are numerous and at S9 across the band.

Thanks for the comment Paul :) Appreciate it 👍

Hi, are you in the MLA-30 active antenna facebook group? I would like to hear updates of your miniwhip setup

pvc not metal and ground the cable shield at the bottom of the mast and at the point of entering your house.

You’re welcome :) I havnt used the MLA-30 before so I couldn’t really comment on which is better. I may get one to test :)

this thing just doesn't work. the pseudoscientific explanations of how this works are plain bullshit. something about "it picks up less signal but also less noise" and "it's only sensitive to electric fields and not the noisy magnetic fields" --- ah but the magloop says "it's less noisy because it works with the magnetic field and isn't affected by the noisy electric field". so which is it? answer: none. an electric field has always an associated magnetic field and vice versa. stick to dipoles, vertical, and other traditional antenna designs that actually work.

Try disconnecting the screen and earthing the antenna screen so you have no antenna screen return to your sdr it worked for me giving very good gain.

Just a couple ground radials will probably help also if a metal roof isnt available

I’m using an RSPdx in HDR mode so it auto selects between ZIF and LIF :-) thanks for watching :) 👌

My antenna analizer will not work with the circuitry on the antenna.

My neighbour loves LED lights :-( But loops I’ll be investigating very soon :) 👌

i tried both mini whips and loops and neither give any good results (or results at all). I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

I love Amsterdam :)

nice to see a fellow hamradio enthusiastic from krabbegat ;)

@@d.shortwave4280 import krab... 73's, NL134

Thank Colin, I think you’re right, from what I’ve also read the mini whip needs a really good earth, thanks for watching 🙏

Good afternoon to you too! 👌

SDRUno

I guess it depends on how strong the signal is. It doesn’t need to be that strong for a decode. What software are you using? And what frequencies have you tried?

@@TechMindsOfficial I have problems receiving even a little bit of signal at all. Actually I receive medium wave really poorly too: I've tried with both a 14m dipole and an am loop antenna without any results. (just some really faint am stations) perhaps I'm doing something wrong in the software?

@@TechMindsOfficial reading other comments maybe I was in zif the hole time, does it impact the performance a lot?

piefadase YT Unless you receive AM stations from 550 kHz and up, it shouldn’t be any issues with Navtex. If you hear the signal at 518 kHz, but software doesn’t respond with a messages, something is wrong with settings. Try Yand 7.0, it is the best you can have for free

Strangely enough the instructions that came with mine didn’t mention anything about a metallic mast. It wasn’t until I started doing some proper research on how the mini whip works that I realised. I’ll have to try it in a plastic tube attached to a metal pole to see how well it works.

SDRuno by SDRPlay

Thank you for letting me know, I have now updated the links: ( UK) amzn.to/3miq9L2 (USA) amzn.to/3GSRvRu

If you have the space for 50M of wire then put up a dipole or an end fed, you wouldn’t need something like the mini whip. 👍

Useless in the house picks up to much noise, best on a pole in the middle of a garden or as high as possible.

@@TechMindsOfficial but a dipole isn't broadband ? 🤔

Pretty much my guess too

the idea of the mini whip is that it receives far less noise than a resonant antenna so you can use it as a RX antenna while transmitting in your vertical. i find this to be bullshit. I built a "mini whip" and it was just crap, it's just not a good antenna. anyone telling you it works, is because he didn't do A/B testing with a proper traditional dipole or vertical.

It was completely dead, like nothing, zilch, nada..

lol i sold my Bonito MegActiv MA305FT within 2 weeks never had such bad reception with it.. than i bought one original one from Roelof on his site buy a assembled one direct from Pa0rdt its working flawless for over 5 years here. and amazing at vlf

Totally agree!

I installed as per the instructions that come with it.. which is why I mentioned in the video there are many versions of this antenna. To be honest, I didn’t nearly bother coz I wasn’t impressed with it.