I take that back. The Terk AM Advantage is a passive loop. However, it does have a plug to attach to a receiver. I either use it passively with my portable AM radio, or plug it into my receiver to pick up AM stations on that radio.
I do like it for several reasons:
- It's fairly small, and sits on my night-table in front of my Grundig S350. The open design of the loop lets me reach through it to get to the controls on the radio, unlike other passive loops like the Select-A-tenna.
- I live in a valley where radio reception is very poor. It definitely pulls in the weaker stations. I can get Sacramento and Fresno with it.
- Sometimes, I'll position it at a 90 degree angle, and use it to block nearby interference instead of amplifying the frequency I want.
- They do say that the attenna will work better with poor radios than with good radios. For instance, the Grundig S350 has a very large AM antenna already in it, so the Terk doesn't help it as much as with the Yacht Boy, which has a smaller ferrite antenna in it.
That said, people say the Select-A-Tenna is a better passive loop. Or, for the BEST AM antenna, people say the CC Crane Twin-Coil antenna is great. All three (Terk, Select-a-tenna, and twin-coil) can be found at the C Crane website.
-PJ