YouLoop Short Wave Listening Antenna

YouLoop Review

Short wave listening goes back to the dawn of radio communications and new tools makes enjoying hobby very inexpensive. The YouLoop passive SWL antenna is one of those tools.

The YouLoop antenna is a passive short wave antenna that is described as a generalized Mobius antenna or a noise cancelling passive loop antenna. There are two things about this antenna I find particularly interesting.

First is the fact that it is a passive antenna. Unlike the MLA 30 antenna I’ve reviewed here, this antenna doesn’t have any powered components. The other thing I think is pretty cool is how the two conductors in the coax that makes the loop swap at the top of the loop.

The YouLoop is a Coax Antenna

Let’s take a quick detour here. A coaxial cable or coax is a cable that has two conductors thus the “co” in coax. The inner conductor is often a solid wire that provides some stiffness. It is covered by an insulating dielectric material to separate it from the outer conductor. It may or may not have a foil shielding layer. The outside conductor is a braided wire sleeve that covers the inner conductor. The entire assembly is covered in a plastic sleeve for protection from the elements.

Coax connectors have a plug side and a socket side. The center conductor forms the plug and it fits into a socket on the receiving device. The outer conductor is connected to the outside part of the connector which makes a solid contact when the connectors are screwed together.

What’s cool about this antenna is that the small box at the top of the loop swaps the connectors so that the inner connector is paired with the outer connector passing through the box and down the other side of the loop.

The bottom box contains a balun which is an abbreviation for balanced – unbalanced. This device is used to match a balanced signal such as from the antenna to an unbalanced signal present in the coax.

Let’s take a quick look at what you’ll get when your antenna arrives.

YouLoop in Box — YouLoop Antenna in the Box

How Well Does It Work?

With my RTL-SDR dongle as my SDR radio on my laptop, the antenna definitely worked better than the telescopic antenna that came with the SDR. You need to remember that loop antennas have a null that parallels the loop’s opening. That means you can turn the antenna to “null out” strong local stations and provide a degree of directionality to the antenna.

You may have noticed that the antenna is described as working best with HDR or high dynamic range radios. This mainly refers to SDR radios. In this test I’ll be using an RTL-SDR dongle as my analog to digital converter. This is not and HDR device. The RTL-SDR has an 8 bit sample which one article I read said could be computed as having about a 50 dB dynamic range. A analog to digital converter having a 12 bit sample would compute as about a 74dB dynamic range and analog to digital converters having a 16 bit sample would compute to about a 98 dB dynamic range.

The Airspy HF+ SDRs list their sampling rate as 18 bits. They are also more expensive so we’ll see how a lower dynamic range radio works as well as a portable HF receiver. The MSi SDR panadapter receiver claims to have a 12 bit sample which would add significantly to the dynamic range. They are available on eBay and Amazon. With some accessories, they’re about twice to three times the cost of the RTL-SDR but still less than $100 dollars.

Airspy HF + SDRs claim an 18 bit sample but are more like $170.00 US.

So there you have it. I hope you found this helpful as you think about adding a short wave listening antenna to your radio kit bag.