Lab 6 - Square Loop Antenna

The primary goal of this lab was to become familiar with the design, construction, and tuning of a square loop antenna. This antenna was constructed by looping copper wire around the outside of a pizza box.

It was determined from the calculations associated with the prelab that we needed to loop our wire 17 times around our 16 inch pizza box to achieve optimal performance. With our TA's help, we used the RF communication test set in the back of the room to adjust the required trimming capacitor to tune the antenna. The pizza box antenna that my lab partner and I constructed is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Square loop antenna constructed with pizza box and copper wire

The antenna was tuned with the function generator. We adjusted the trimmer capacitor until we were able to produce a good sinewave with minimal noise as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Antenna tuned to achieve maximum output for 1230kHz

When we tested the radio in lab, we had trouble picking up anything. We were expecting to hear static as we moved the antenna around manually to pick up the desired radio station, but we were unable produce any results. I am working to determine a solution to this issue.