Friday, August 12, 2011

The Clifton Labs Z1501 Active Antenna - Pt 3 Properly Erected

The next step was to find a better location for the antenna. I erected it on a pole around 30 meters away from the house, and prepared the necessary RG-58 coax. Still with the 1.5 meter whip, I mounted the enclosure at around 2 meters, so the total height of the antenna is 3.5 meters. Mounting it higher will increase its gain.

Both the noise level and signal levels improved considerably. As can be seen below, the antenna appears to have  equal sensitivity all the way up to 30 MHz. I didn't compare with the Mini-Whip this time. At the time of writing, 90 minutes after sunset, it seems to work well on MW with a noise floor around -120 dBm.

Weather permitting, I will erect my 310-degree beverage tomorrow. It will be interesting to compare noise floors and signal levels. I will also replace the 1.5 meter whip with the 3 meter whip to see how much gain increases.

Already at this stage though, the Z1501 has proved to be an excellent all-round antenna, both with regards to coverage (since it is omni-directional) and frequency range.

No comments: