My homemade antenna is a full wave loop. Since it is a triangle and oriented parallel to the ground, it should be call a horizontal Delta Loop. The formula for a full wave loop is the frequency in Mhz divided by 1005 to give a length in feet. So for one centered on the Mississippi Phone Net frequency of 3.862 Mhz. Would be 261 feet in total length. I used 265 feet and a MFJ tuner.

I bought a spool of common 14 guage black wire from Home Depot. A plastic center support was made using some electrical outlet covers I got from Perkins hardware. A large round one was selected and I drilled holes and tied the ends of the wires and hung the balun from the bottom. Getting the loop's three mounting points up in the supporting trees was accomplished by using a bow and some arrows with string attached. I then pulled Dacron rope and pulleys over the entire tree and hoisted the wire up into the air to a height of about 75 feet.

The feed point is at one of the corners and regular 50 ohm coax is used with a 4:1 balun. I tried a 1:1, 3:1 and 4:1 to see what the effect of each type had on the system. The 4:1 seemed to have less tuning with slight changes in frequency.

The best shape for the Delta is for each side to be of the same length. I couldn't get it to fit the opening and just did the best I could and then tried it out. The performance is all I expected. Inside the state on 75 meters is remarkable. I can hear almost all the stations on the net and seem to have no trouble checking in to any net controller regardless of their location. On 20 meters I have pushed a fairly decent SSTV picture into Australia and New Zealand even during the down side of the solar cycle. I seem to have a fairly even signal in all directions except for the Arabian area.