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Richard PA7FA wanted to become active on 160m during the 2007 PACC contest. Being mostly active on 144 MHz and higher contests (see www.pa6.nl), 160m is a grey area for me. Fortunately, my old collegue and friend Kees PA0CLN revealed some of his 160m secrets to me and this is how I discovered the real expert information on K9AY loops.
Now I understand why Kees was so late at work sometimes in the late nineties ; -)

DXing on 160m is a actually contest towards the (man made) noise. In my opinion the challenge is not to transmit, but to receive. Reading the internet, the K9AY loops, discovered in the late nineties, are considered to be at least one of the holy 160m DX grails.
So, Richard and I made two loops, directing towards NE-SW / NW - SE.

Click on the image to enlarge the picture.

Listening for the first time to the K9AY loops is really a special experience!! Although the loops have an attenuation of >20 dB, the S/N ratio is incredibly better than our transmitting antenna, which is an inverted L with 8 radials. The first evening we worked JA, 9M2, V51 and other stations, all not audible on the TX antenna due to heavy QRM and/or QRN.

During the 2007 PACC contest PA7FA made ca. 150 QSO’s on 160m with 33 multipliers.