I have one here and would not be able to do much on 160 without it. Patterns depend mostly on what antennas you hook to it. I have tried short verts, was not happy. Now use 2 aperiodic loops which look toward Europe. They are 100 feet or so apart. Works well, and I use this setup as follows.
I watch the baseline on my P4 scope and adjust the NCC for the lowest baseline, which is my overall noise level. That often cuts both local and distant crud. This gives me the best chance of hearing in any direction and almost always is a big help. I compare signals between the NCC2 and a regular K8AY loop setup. If I had a better location I'd make a set of loops looking various directions but that is not possible here. The NCC2 is great mostly because it is very stable and can be set for repeatable results. I've messed with it on local BC stations and what one can do with it is often amazing, but mostly on ground wave signals in daytime. Nulls may be deep but arrival of signals via higher angles keeps things in flux. The NCC seems to be almost overload-proof. Yes, if the signal you want is in the same direction as your QRM/QRN you are working against yourself so to speak. That's true of all RX antenna setups. de K8RYU _________________ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector