Messages

1

Equipment / Re: first land based SW Antenna?

« on: December 14, 2022, 1314 UTC »

A simple longwire of 60-75 ft., high enough not to strangle the taller neighbors, will get you in the game. A 40 meter band inverted "V" dipole at about 35 ft. at the high point is a good all around antenna. Both are simple antennas w/ the most expensive component being the feedline. Neither of those antennas is going to cost more than twenty bucks to build.

Nothing you build on land is going to outperform a vertical over salt water, though.

Ahoy Pigmeat;

All those years at sea, I was always amazed, therefore kept my interest in SW listening, as I'd be half way to Hawaii on watch at night, and pick up AM stations from Chicago, Houston etc etc on top of Short Wave on 2,4, 8 Mhz from Far East, Guam, and South America. Anyways all good and I look forward to what I can pick up.

Many thanks for the input, I'll check out the 40M inverted V dipole. Anything I do will be about 25 feet in the air from my house out to the trees in my backyard.

Cheers for now

2

Equipment / Re: first land based SW Antenna?

« on: December 13, 2022, 1450 UTC »

RobRich,

Thanks for the welcome!

Many thanks for the technical feedback, this is helpful!

Cheers for now.

3

Equipment / first land based SW Antenna?

« on: December 13, 2022, 1131 UTC »

Ahoy all,

for most of my SW listening, I have been at sea, so a large vertical antenna from the USB/LSB SSB TX radio is what we used for RX on a FRG-7 froggy and a few other radios.

Now I'm ashore and back into SW listening.

I'm thinking two antenna types. One, a active wire LOOP antenna, 35' in the air, peak of my roof. Second, I have plenty of wooded space to the rear of my house. So thinking a long wires out to 135' or so with 3 shorter ones at the appropriate lengths to cover between 2 Megs and 30 Megs? this will run from about 25' off the ground to trees in my backyard.

My house faces East and West, so off the back side long wire antenna would be orientated along a mostly East West centerline.

I'm pretty handy at electrical etc etc, so can build anything I need. BUT thought these two would get me started.

I'm currently using a restored Yaesumusen FRG-7 "Froggy" with the added fine tune from later production. I used this radio 90% at sea, so comfortable with it.

What say you on the first antennas? this useful until I can narrow it down with further listening experience shore side?

Thanks all......