In reading CV's posting on 12/10/2013 he says that there is not much difference between a loop & a loop-stick. Remembering what I read in the ARRL handbook they talk about some HIGH-Q circuits. Are they talking about antennas or the RF & IF circuits AFTER the converter tube. I've heard of HIGH-Q circuits but what are they? It's not hard to wind a ferite rod antenna but where does a person get a raw loop-stick without the winding? I have wound some loop antennas & they're not TOO bad. Getting them JUST RIGHT on both the low & high end is rather tricky. Thank you or the web-site on the "winding? formula". Will check later to see how complicated it is!

Well, that's a bit of a misquote. My contention was that for any radio that is already equipped with an air-wound antenna, the increase in sensitivity by converting to a ferrite-core antenna will be marginal. The things that a ferrite-core antenna will buy you that an air-wound loop cannot are (1) very compact size; and (2) ability to adjust directionality easily. But at the end of the day both antennas have to be capable of being tuned to resonance using the existing tuning capacitor of the radio: so the impedances of the two loop types need to be roughly the same.

For any resonant circuit (which would include an antenna loop + tuning capacitor) "Q" is a relative indicator of damping: high-Q resonant circuits will sustain oscillations longer than lower-Q circuits. For most applications where is is desirable to pick one frequency out of many (i.e., a radio front end) high Q is more desirable than lower Q.

Raw ferrite rods can be purchased from Alltronics.com and many other sites. I've got no personal experience with Alltronics but I checked their site and they seem to have a decent variety.

:Raw ferrite rods can be purchased from Alltronics.com and many other sites. I've got no personal experience with Alltronics but I checked their site and they seem to have a decent variety.
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"Q" refers to the figure of merit, or effency of something. In the case of a coil, it is the AC impedance divided by the DC resistance. In a tuned circuit, the higher the Q, the narrower the bandwidth.
Lewis