Simple 20 minute DIY magnetic loop for FT8

This is what happened yesterday evening: I made a magnetic loop out of old coax. I was really excited to know if magnetic loops really work so I made a quick test setup. It looks crap, is built crap and most probably can perform much better If built from appropriate material. But thats what we found here. 

• 3m Coax RG213
• 1m Coax RG58
• some SO/PL 259
• wooden sticks, ca 80cm long
• tie straps
• end caps for the stick (not really needed but love to play with the 3d printer ;) )

Nothing more. That costs less than 10 bucks and 30 minutes of time.

all the pieces I had to cut off during the tuning process

The tuning was an easy task. I first tuned to 30m by cutting pieces from the RG58 which is my capacitor in this case. After 5 minutes I had an SWR of 1:1.3 on 30m FT8 frequency. I tried to make a contact, increased power to 10 watts...20 watts...30 watts...BAM -> bad SWR. I went back to the balcony. What happened? The end of the RG58 melted and made a shortcut. NOTE: Never leave the end of the coax open. It has to be insulated.  

The cap - cable was now too short for 30m so I decided to tune for 20m. Did that, tried 50 watts, went back to 25 watts to be safe. 

SWR on 20m 14.07 :) FT8ed!

I was even able to work a couple stations, but the band was already in a bad shape since it was night time. 

Conclusion: It may be worth to go through the build process of a good magnetic loop and invest into a good capacitor. I am sure, these things could perform well. Mine was only on the balcony, 50cm away from the wall and did already work better than other balcony-things I've tried. 

'Finished' (ugly) antenna - thank god it's dark!!

By the way: This link helped me -> https://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/frank_radio_antenna_magloop.htm