Tweaking the wire spacing does very little if anything and it’s easier to simply wrap the wire with zero gap rather than a specific spacing. The wire insulation provides for the separation of the copper conductors, so spacing will be ~0.1”. I’m going with 18 windings (433-2389 kHz) in the loop which will cover about 1.8” of the 6” available. After the loop antenna is tested and checks good, I’ll cover it with a veneer to (1) protect the loop and (2) dress up the box to make it look nice.

SInce the antenna is totally passive, it doesn’t need to be anywhere near the 120VAC 60 Hz power which is the primary source of AM static & noise.

Next, I need to study small footprint SW antennas.