Antenna’s

It seems that no matter what antenna you have or use, you always have the thought that it could be better. Initially I used the built in whip on the shortwave receivers I have… usually disappointing, then I moved to a little 20′ spool of wire that came with my Sony, better but it only made me want to hear those signals that were just on the fringe…. For shortwave listening I’ve had great experience with a spool of shielded speaker wire (about 50′) shorted at both ends and strung between two trees. Usually, the further away from the house and higher the better… It makes for an excellent random wire. In fact, the last time we went camping I made sure I had a 50′ spool of speaker wire in with the radio….. But, the same likely wouldn’t do for transmitting, nor would it necessarily do as well in the VHF range… (polarization is a whole different story…)

This vertical design looks like a good one for the ~140 Mhz range that 2m amateur and some police/fire/ems frequencies work on.

For short wave listening, I’ve heard great things about the end-fedz and I’ve even seen some end-fedz that are rated for transmitting in the HF bands. They’d certainly make for a fairly portable setup as a ~45 ft. coil of wire doesn’t take up a ton of room - (combine that with your .3 watt Pixie II in an altoids can…. that’s qrpp….)

Anyway………