We are excited to announce that a new strategical technical partner joined us on the 3C2MD adventure.
QuietRadio™ is a relatevely new UK company (registered in 2021) runned by David Evans GW4GTE. We have seen their advertising visiting our partner’s website DX Engineering (DXE is the sole importer for USA of the QuietRadio’s products) and our attention has been attracted by their innovative product Aziloop™. Azi(muth)loop is a Low Band RX compact system from LF to low part of HF (till 10MHz), with similar shape and dimensions of the K9AY-four directions system, but with specific and amazing features.
Before to reveal those features, let us share with you what problems we are going to face during next (and in all the past and all the future…) expedition.
During our DX Expeditions all the takers are “DX”, meant more than 3000 Km faraway, so we are not interested on high angles arrival (we are surrounded by 3000 Km of Africa and Atlantic ocean, only QRM and QRN arrive from higher angles…), and our main concerns are, obviously, to hear you on 80 and 160m bands.
So our main issues are:
-Very noisy equatorial area: permanent electrical storms that gift us permanent high level of QRN expecially during the night.
-Very noisy surronding: all the “high quality” led lamps, refused from USA and Europe are welcome in Africa. QRM is, literally, everywhere!
-Low signals: as above said, our takers are far, far away…
-Vertical TX antennas on 80 and 160m, thus not well performing as receiving antennas.
–Main heading of our takers are 310, 0 and 50 degrees, respectively USA, Europe and Japan.
So we definitively need RX antennas for low bands, to “clean” somehow the signals from noise and give some heading in receiving, at least to try separate the three areas of interest during pile-up.
As you may see from aerial picture of our QTH, (see our location at minute 1:00 of 3C2MD promo video on Youtube HERE) the open clear space available to install terminated long wire antennas (i.e. Beverage and BOG) is quite small, and we may know if it will be possible to do that only when arrived at place… and nobody knows if installed antennas will work or not!
Aziloop™ offers several tactical advantages:
-Limited amount of needed space (is developing in “volume” more than in “lenght”).
-Two different kinds of antenna selectable:“Loop mode” switchable with a “K9AY mode”.
–Electronic rotation of reception heading by 5 degree steps without moving the antenna (Stepped-Azimuth™ technology).
-Preamplifier +18dB on the external unit protected by pass band filter from overloads coming from high bands’ emissions (at least 20mt band is active till very late night)
–Variable terminal resistor, driven from the shack
-Very lightweight external and internal units
-Control panel on PC, no “physical” command box needed
And, the best:
-Control of the whole external system trough the coaxial cable, no additional command cable needed!
Much more features are available and you are welcome to discover remaining part of them on QuietRadio™ product’s page HERE. Do not miss the Youtube channel with impressive demostration videos (click HERE): we promise you’ll be amazed!
Coming back on the ground: will Aziloop™ be the solution of all our LB RX problems? Not easy to say now and here, 3000 Km far from the expedition’s QTH, but Dave accepted the challenge: QuietRadio™ lent to 3C2MD one Aziloop™ system to try “on the field” and compare with other RX antennas we may be able to install, with the aim to produce a report to the HAM community after the expedition.
Thank you Dave: we will try harder to get the best from your work!