Behold my creation:

Image Link

Image Link

I hope they are forgiving because it's more a make it from what I had kind of thing,
rather than going to get the right material.
I'm missing any spacing between windings, and the windings are not so neat.

That looks fine to me.

If it pulls in stations then job done.

Looks ok and should work well, I am more than surprised as to the efficiency of the loop aerial on a battery portable which was recently rebuilt.

Have you tested the loop aerial as yet Art ?

Would be interested to see how it goes as my battery portable does a good job with its loop.

All you should need to do is put the portable inside the loop and tune the loop to the current station on the radio.

It's for a console, so far working fine connected directly,
but then so does my $20 plastic Jaycar loop antenna.

I have not yet made the single turn loop for connection to the radio.

Let us know how it works on far off stations when you get a chance if you would not mind.

Is the loop outside the building or sitting inside somewhere ?

It's only sitting inside, but I can compare it to the Jaycar loop antenna,
but the idea was the tuned loop with inductive pickup.
I think I can try it tomorrow.

Well not so much luck really, it's hard to tell because there is good reception here anyway.
My favourite station is not the strongest, but is ok with any antenna.

When I put a portable with it's own ferrite antenna inside, if anything, it messes up reception and can't be tuned in.
Maybe I got the number of turns wrong. I read differently on different sites for the same length, and ended up using 12 turns where each cross part is aprox 26.5 inches.

If you can tune a station to a maximum volume on the loop with the variable capacitor and the cap is not at max capacitance or minimum capacitance, then the loop is working. If you're at max capacitance that means you need to add a turn or two to the loop. If it's at minimum, you need to remove a turn from the loop.

A Grid Dip Oscillator would be useful for detemining the resonance of the loop.

They are a handy gadget for projects like this.

I based it loosely on this site:

http://www.iw5edi.com/ham-radio/?how-to-build-a-tuned-loop-antenna,118.

which says to use 18 turns.
I didn't use any end parts to separate the wire, but did factor in the
extra inch each side of length for the thickness of those parts.

but then followed the advice of this AM loop calculator:

http://www.angelfire.com/mb/amandx/loop.html.

and used 12 turns.

I will try an inductive pickup today.
Other than the wire itself, this was nearly free to build from industrial waste.
It happens to be cedar blinds. So it doesn't matter if I toss it.

Ps.. that doesn't mean giving up on it, just scrapping this one.
The way it's made doesn't allow to continue with it neatly.

Loop antennas are trickier than they look at first glance, and trickier than many of the internet sources suggest.

The loop itself has to be right, the tuning capacitor has to be right, and the whole thing has to match the receiver's tuning circuits as well (if directly connected).

I've made two of different designs, and while they each work well for part of the band, neither of them is ideal across the whole MW band, let alone for SW. I get the best result by combining a loop (for selectivity) with a random wire (for gain). But I'm just going by trial and error.

Maven

Next time I'll copy a design to the letter and won't waste cloth covered wire on the next one!