Wellbrook Antenna

[radioman148]

Several people have mentioned Wellbrook antennas for good MW reception.
I'm thinking of installing one this summer as I don't have the room for a long wire.
Is this antenna worth it? Will it significantly improve my chances for getting TA reception from the Chicago area? Which model should I get?

thanks in advance.

 

[Icangelp]

First, your location in Chicago is a major factor in whether any antenna will be effective for you. I live in a suburb of Cincinnati, and near a couple of strong signals including 50KW WCKY, which is just 6 miles from my house. My Wellbrooks don't have issues relating to those signals. Also, in my neighborhood, our power/tele utilities are underground.

I have both a 1530+, and a ALA 100M, however I believe the 1530+ has been replaced by another 1530 version. I love both antennas, but use my 1530+ as my regular antenna. I use the ALA 100M at our Indiana farm, and for travel DX'ing.

The advantage of the 1530+ is that it is compact, can be set up quickly, and is very effective.

The ALA 100M being a wire antenna is more flexible, and if you have a little more room for a larger antenna size, will outperform the 1530+. You can set it up as a rectangle or a triangle.

To take advantage of the directional properties of either antenna, you will need to be able to rotate these antennas, either by hand or using a rotator.

The key to the Wellbrooks and other antennas like them, is to get them as far away from electrical interference as possible, my experience is at least 20 feet from the house. The further, the better.

That said, if you are skilled and patient, you can build compact antennas just as good or better for a fraction of the cost, Me,? I'm lazy and went the Wellbrook route, and I don't regret it.

I have heard a number of longwave Euros, and a couple of MW Euros, however I have strong signals near a lot of the MW split frequencies targets.

I don't think I would buy these antennas if your only reason is to hear Euro broadcasters. The potential targets are too few, and the price is too high. If you want to improve LW/MW reception, and if you have the spare cash, go for it, and remember that they are also reasonably effective on the tropical and shortwave bands.

P.S. I have several indoor loop antennas, but we have so much in-house interference, they are of little value at my location.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that my Wellbrook is connected to a Drake R8B, a receiver that handles strong signals very well.

 

[radioman148]

First, your location in Chicago is a major factor in whether any antenna will be effective for you. I live in a suburb of Cincinnati, and near a couple of strong signals including 50KW WCKY, which is just 6 miles from my house. My Wellbrooks don't have issues relating to those signals. Also, in my neighborhood, our power/tele utilities are underground.

I have both a 1530+, and a ALA 100M, however I believe the 1530+ has been replaced by another 1530 version. I love both antennas, but use my 1530+ as my regular antenna. I use the ALA 100M at our Indiana farm, and for travel DX'ing.

The advantage of the 1530+ is that it is compact, can be set up quickly, and is very effective.

The ALA 100M being a wire antenna is more flexible, and if you have a little more room for a larger antenna size, will outperform the 1530+. You can set it up as a rectangle or a triangle.

To take advantage of the directional properties of either antenna, you will need to be able to rotate these antennas, either by hand or using a rotator.

The key to the Wellbrooks and other antennas like them, is to get them as far away from electrical interference as possible, my experience is at least 20 feet from the house. The further, the better.

That said, if you are skilled and patient, you can build compact antennas just as good or better for a fraction of the cost, Me,? I'm lazy and went the Wellbrook route, and I don't regret it.

I have heard a number of longwave Euros, and a couple of MW Euros, however I have strong signals near a lot of the MW split frequencies targets.

I don't think I would buy these antennas if your only reason is to hear Euro broadcasters. The potential targets are too few, and the price is too high. If you want to improve LW/MW reception, and if you have the spare cash, go for it, and remember that they are also reasonably effective on the tropical and shortwave bands.

P.S. I have several indoor loop antennas, but we have so much in-house interference, they are of little value at my location.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that my Wellbrook is connected to a Drake R8B, a receiver that handles strong signals very well.

Do you find the Wellbrook to be significantly better than the standard ferrite antennas that come with radios such as the C Crane and Grundig G5 which I use? Am I gonna be able to pull the DX out better with the Wellbrook outdoors than the antennas that come with the radio?
I'm in the suburbs about 30 miles north of the city. Most power lines are underground, but there are a few less then a half block away.
Getting the antenna on a rotor above my roof will not be a problem.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

I have the 1530+ out in the sticks south of Indianapolis. A friend has one about 100 miles west of here in Illinois. I think we were both hoping for something hot as a firecracker and while were weren't anywhere near disgusted, likewise, we weren't blown away by the performance either. I bought it for the broadband characteristics so I wouldn't have to constantly run up on the roof & adjust a capacitor every time I wanted to listen on a different frequency...on that point, it's been great. I have never heard any Europeans with this or with my 220' vertical long wire (the long wire blows away the Wellbrook, but it isn't directional & after losing the front end of my Icom IC-R1500 in a thunderstorm, I rarely use it any longer). The very best way I can describe it is like this : If you build a reasonable sized (let's say 2' x 2') loop with a tuning capacitor and set it next to a GE Superadio II, it will leave the Wellbrook in the dust....but you must retune the loop every time you change stations and to me, that's a huge inconvenience. What I'm doing right now is placing the Wellbrook about 5' from the 240' tower in the backyard & using the Wellbrook as a very expensive coupling loop. It's quiet and it's sensitive, but not directional. Worth noting that I added the Wellbrook preamp to the loop & that helped some, but it's still not what I'd call an awesome performer.

 

[radioman148]

I have the 1530+ out in the sticks south of Indianapolis. A friend has one about 100 miles west of here in Illinois. I think we were both hoping for something hot as a firecracker and while were weren't anywhere near disgusted, likewise, we weren't blown away by the performance either. I bought it for the broadband characteristics so I wouldn't have to constantly run up on the roof & adjust a capacitor every time I wanted to listen on a different frequency...on that point, it's been great. I have never heard any Europeans with this or with my 220' vertical long wire (the long wire blows away the Wellbrook, but it isn't directional & after losing the front end of my Icom IC-R1500 in a thunderstorm, I rarely use it any longer). The very best way I can describe it is like this : If you build a reasonable sized (let's say 2' x 2') loop with a tuning capacitor and set it next to a GE Superadio II, it will leave the Wellbrook in the dust....but you must retune the loop every time you change stations and to me, that's a huge inconvenience. What I'm doing right now is placing the Wellbrook about 5' from the 240' tower in the backyard & using the Wellbrook as a very expensive coupling loop. It's quiet and it's sensitive, but not directional. Worth noting that I added the Wellbrook preamp to the loop & that helped some, but it's still not what I'd call an awesome performer.

Thanks for your honest assessment.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

How well would a Wellbrook work in an urban area where you have several powerful stations nearby, and want to DX stations on adjacent channels in the same (or near the same, or opposite) direction? Would a several-foot tuned loop work better in a situation like that? My Select-A-Tenna just isn't good enough for me.

For example, I'm near El Cajon, CA - east of San Diego. Nearby I have 5kW IBOC KOGO west on 600 at 8 miles, 77kW (50kW night) XEWW (still listed as XETRA on FCC & radio-locator) southwest on 690 at 32 miles, 5kW (50kW night) KFMB northwest on 760 at 7 miles, 5kW KECR north on 910 at 9 miles, 10kW KSDO north on 1130 at 6 miles, 50kW (2.9kW night) KCBQ on 1170 north at 9 miles (same site as 910), and 5kW (1kW night) KLSD (yes, that's their call! - stood for Liberal San Diego when they carried Air America, now are Xtra Sports) west on 1360 at 8 miles (across the highway from 600), as well as numerous other not-as-strong channels - for example KFI, KBRT and KNX come in with fairly strong signals here. Stations I would like to hear with listenable signals at noon in summer (and with about as much interference as if the adjacent local blowtorches were off the air) include 50kW KNBR NW on 680 at 445 miles, 50kW KALL N/NE on 700 at 626 miles, 50kW KCBC N/NW on 770 at 413 miles, 5kW KPSI N/NE on 920 at 80 miles, 10kW KNWQ N/NE on 1140 at 81 miles, and 50kW KERN N/NW on 1180 at 237 miles, just to name a few.

Also, would it work well at my grandma's house in San Gabriel? She's 1/3 mile southeast of 23kW 1300 KAZN and 50kW 1430 KMRB. Would 5kW 1290 KKDD 48 miles east be receivable, sandwiched between KAZN and 1kW 1280 KFRN at 24 miles S/SW? Also what about 1440 KFNY at 42 miles E/SE? BTW, if within 1/3 mile (or 0.6 km) is near field, then I've calculated the field strength (not accounting for ground losses or directional patterns) of 1300 KAZN to be around 2,600 mV/m, and 1430 KMRB approximately 4,400 mV/m. According to Radio-Locator, 1290 KKDD and 1440 KFNY would be somewhere between 0.15 and 0.5 mV/m.

Would the Wellbrook shine in an urban area like those two examples, or is there a better solution without breaking the bank, like I nearly did on my used Select-A-Tenna and my then-new Tecsun PL-606? BTW the PL-380, which uses the same DSP chip as the PL-606 and is supposed to have excellent selectivity, struggles severely with receiving the aforementioned 1280 KFRN at my grandma's house, as well as 1kW 1230 KYPA 13 mi W/SW, 20kW 1260 KGIL 24 mi W/NW, 5kW 1330 KWKW 17 mi W/SW, 5kW 1460 KTYM 18 mi W/SW, 1480 5kW KVNR 27 mi S/SE, and 10kW 1650 KFOX 17 mi W/SW. On 1390, 5kW KLTX 17 mi S/SW isn't as tough, but is still quite noisy, as is 50kW 1580 KBLA at 10 mi W/SW, to a somewhat lesser extent. For contrast, at my house (which isn't an ideal location for barefoot DXing) I can get a faint signal from 960 KIXW even though I'm 33% outside their 0.15 mV/m contour (the stations the DSP radios struggle with at my grandma's house, although they can be heard, are all at least 2 mV/m), and in rural areas I've heard stations up to twice as far as the 0.15mV/m radio-locator contour.

 

[Tom Wells]

Radioman148, I have a fine indoor antenna to show you when you come pick up your VCR.

It's exactly what Bob on the Job was describing, this one is a mid-1920s version of a squashed-diamond loop.

No problem at all to tune each time, in fact, I find that to be another advantage.
When the radio it's attached to is really hot, tuning the loop almost makes it seem like you're using a
Q multiplier in the IF circuit. You'll like the effect, I'm sure.

Between 1. Angle of outer loop
2.Angle of inner loop
3 Relationship one to loop to the other and and desired direction
4 Tuning of radio
5 Tuning of loop
6 coupling of longwires into system...
There are an amazing number of signals that can be dragged out of the mud.

A friend of mine built a replica of mine out of nothing more than dowel rods and a few pieces of wood and the wire.

As Icangelp points out, this requires the your local rf environment be clean.
You may have to turn off cable boxes, computers, etc, for the really weak signals.

Bob, someday I really want to see that big-ol loop/vertical... I'd think you could power a small soldering pencil
if you tuned that thing to 700.

 

[Tom Wells]

TCFwings....if carefuilly built, a physically larger loop should be able to cancel better a make a sharper null.
But that ONLY works off to 90 degrees.
What you might need to do is use a loop, longwire (whatever length) and an interference cancelling amp
which is a differenctial amp. You can set it up with the longwire input on the "noise" input,
your loop on the "antenna" input and adjust to null out the overload signal.

I suspect what you REALLY need to do is de-sense the the loop inside that radio, which probably
is not very well reasonated in the way a physically tuned circuit would be.
This makes it broader in bandwidth and hurts by too much pickup of adjacent frequencies.


Try changing the angle of radio-to-select-a-tenna ( and to the station) to see how you are aiding/opposing
reception of signals by proximity/phase/angle.

If there's a strong undesired at 180 degrees off a desired signal, not too much helps.

 

[Icangelp]

My experience is that the Wellbrooks’ don't materially improve the incoming signal versus other good antennas, but they do a good job of lowering the threshold created by man made electrical noise, allowing one to hear the broadcast signal. Also, they are directional, nulling signals at right angles to the plane. The 1530 series does all this in a very compact design.

If rolling your own loop antenna isn’t something you’re interested in doing, then you might consider one of the several commercial loop options available online.

I have a Quantum QX Loop v2.0 from Radio Plus. www.dxtools.com There are a couple of versions of these amplified ferrite loop antennas, with the least expensive at around $200.00, and the plus version around $230.00. They are really well constructed, and I find them to be excellent directional antennas. There is quite a bit of information on them on the web site. RadioIntel reviewed the QX...http://www.radiointel.com/review-qloop.htm

I took the QX Loop outside and away from my house noise, connected it to a friend’s Palstar R30 receiver, and the QX was very impressive.

If you visit the site, take a look at the Q Stick tunable ferrite rod, designed to be used with small, portable radios.

 

[radioman148]

Radioman148, I have a fine indoor antenna to show you when you come pick up your VCR.

It's exactly what Bob on the Job was describing, this one is a mid-1920s version of a squashed-diamond loop.

No problem at all to tune each time, in fact, I find that to be another advantage.
When the radio it's attached to is really hot, tuning the loop almost makes it seem like you're using a
Q multiplier in the IF circuit. You'll like the effect, I'm sure.

Between 1. Angle of outer loop
2.Angle of inner loop
3 Relationship one to loop to the other and and desired direction
4 Tuning of radio
5 Tuning of loop
6 coupling of longwires into system...
There are an amazing number of signals that can be dragged out of the mud.

A friend of mine built a replica of mine out of nothing more than dowel rods and a few pieces of wood and the wire.

As Icangelp points out, this requires the your local rf environment be clean.
You may have to turn off cable boxes, computers, etc, for the really weak signals.

Bob, someday I really want to see that big-ol loop/vertical... I'd think you could power a small soldering pencil
if you tuned that thing to 700.

Thanks Tom. I'll be contacting you soon. Thanks everyone for all of your input.