Your first HF antenna

[Dom13c]

To all of you guys
.                                As a HAM radio operator what was your first ever antenna? As a novice I'm planning to build one too but without clue which one to choose out of the numerous ones present out there.

[DL8RI]

Hi,

first ever build was a similar construction to the BB-6W from Diamond. Lossy core from a Switching-PSU and some meters of wire.
Worked nice on limited space, but practically only for Digimodes. Used on the balcony I had at that time. Rather meh...

Then as first "proper" antenna, a ZS6BKW antenna with lightweight 300 Ohms twin-lead (portability!) instead of the 450 Ohms, use it till today, works nice.
I really like this one, because it does not need any funny filters/traps.

[simas1017]

My first antenna was a 2m 5/8 vertical antenna (homemade). My first HF antenna was end-fed multiband which I still use to this day, you can find more info by searching for PA3HHO on your preffered search engine.

• For VHF I would recomend making 1/2 wave vertical antenna because it is simple to make and is robust.
• For HF I would recommend making simple multiband dipole/inverted vee antenna. (just make 1/2 wave dipole antennas for every band you want and connect them in parallel). This antena is far superior to my end-fed antenna

I've never bought any antennas and I believe that the best antennas are homemade (this is just my opinion).
I hope you have a great time on air!
73!

[hendorog]

I made a sloping triangular delta loop antenna for 40m.  Just because i could fit it onto my section with limited space and a single high point. Performance was fair, probably better than I expected!

[TheSteve]

A piece if wire from the side of the house to the back fence. It worked ok with a tuner but I much prefer a Cushcraft R5 or R7.

[Jr460]

A simple dipole.  Cut for the middle of the 40 meter band.   Ran from side of the house to pole at the back corner of the yard.   A 15 meter dipole was with it, from the same center feed.

[GreyWoolfe]

First HF antenna was a Cushcraft R-6 vertical that was given to me.  First built antenna was a 40 Meter Carolina Windom OCF with proper isolator and vertical radiator.  Current antenna is a DIY 80 Meter full wave loop.  Thankfully, had a friend with a band saw and drill press so I could make the center isolator out of 1/2" acrylic that was given to me.  I did buy the transition balun from the 450R ladder line to coax instead of trying to make my own.

[gargle]

Hello,

my first one :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G5RV_antenna

a very nice and easy to built

[vk6zgo]

Half wave dipole cut for 20m.
Us "Z"calls only got HF privileges when Morse went away in 2004..

I still didn't do anything about it until 2006, when I picked up a roll of cheap thick speaker wire (pretend "monster cable") from a Discount store.
Cut the dipole from this, used some decent porcelain insulators I picked up over the years for the centre & two end insulators, with some polypropylene rope to sling it up
I then chucked one end over a tree branch, & the other to a bit of pipe holding up my 2m vertical.

It was only about 8m high, but gave great service for years-- pretty good for a "spur of the moment"job.

[okz00k]

My first home brew antenna was an 80m dipole with ferrite 1:1 balun in 2" PVC tube. (Still using this balun, 35 years later, on a 10, 15, 20, 40, 80m trap dipole). The original 80m antenna was mounted a 5m gal waterpipe strapped to the eve of my house outside the shack window, with one end 10m up a neighbour's tree and the other end tied to a corner fence post.

[Epatsellis]

My first was a homemade Cobwebb, using the original speaker wire design. Worked great for several years until the wire insulation finally succumbed to UV, was great as an omnidirectional spotting antenna, the turn the triband and switch over to it. it's on my list to be rebuilt and put back up at my new QTH this spring. (hopefully)

[tautech]

First one I did for 315 MHz was a dud, actually worse than that, it was bloody useless.
With the right tool and with the kind help of RF gurus on the forum I fixed it:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/antenna-project-log/

[bd139]

First illegal one: 1988. dipole in nan's garden made out of 75 ohm TV coax I found and discarded mains flex for the legs,  4.43MHz PAL colourburst and 12AU7 transmitter (remains of a Hacker radio and a valve chassis I got from a jumble sale) slap bang in the middle of the marine SW band. This I got my sister to key when i was up the road with a portable shortwave receiver (it was large, heavy and had a BFO - cant remember who made it but my grandfather owned it before he died), unaware of propagation at all. Lasted about 20 minutes before the thing blew the crystal up. Key was a clothes peg with tin foil around it. Surprised I didn't zap her with it.

<< interlude with lots of illegal CB and FM shenanigans >>

First legal one: 2017. 20/40 loaded dipole ready made with mini 8 feed.

Current one: 2018. Light weight 20/30/40 fan dipole home made with home made balun, RG-58 feed.  And a portable Sotabeams 20/30/40 dipole.

[Kalvin]

Magloop for the 40m - 20m HF bands. Dual-band Moxon (quite similar like this one: http://sa555.blogspot.com/2013/08/baofeng-uv5-r-with-so50-satellite.html) for the 2m/70cm bands.

[StuartA]

Another vote for looking at a Magnetic Loop antenna (magloop). Over Christmas, I put up a dipole for 5MHz, but all I could hear was electronics noise and this is typical these days for many urban locations and many people are going to Magloops, which are  fairly immune from noise. I've made one previous Magloop and that worked really well on LF, but didn't stretch to 5MHz. The one I'm now building now is described here https://pa0fri.home.xs4all.nl/Ant/Active%20antenna/Active%20receiving%20%20loop%20antenna%20eng.htm. It covers all the bands up to 30MHz.

Of course, this is for receiving only, I'll still use the dipole to transmit. That said, there are a lot of designs around for magloops which will work on both Rx and Tx.

When I first got involved with ham radio, electronic noise was not a problem and nobody had heard of Magloops, but with today's noise pollution, they have become a hot topic; the internet is full of designs and info.

S

[andrho]

I first started out on 2m, with a purchased co-linear antenna.

When I got my first HF rig, I really wanted to make my own antenna and ended up making a ZS6BKW too.
As said by the other poster, its a simple lightweight antenna that I also still use from time to time.

That said there are lots of simple wire antennas that you can make.
Im looking and making a cobweb or a hexbeam for my next homebrew.

Regards,
Andrew

[vk3yedotcom]

The sort of antenna needed depends on your interests - ie mostly within 1000km or DX - and time you'll be most likely operating (which affects what bands will be your favourites).

As suggested 40m is a good general purpose band with a variety of short and long distance contacts possible. And a dipole as high as you can manage will be tolerably good.
Additional wires could be added for coverage of other bands like 20m.

Guides to frequencies, bands and activity http://home.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/gateway/foundation.htm

Some antenna ideas at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/projects/projwire.htm

[Yansi]

Strange question, I think probably everbody, without an exception, used a length of a wire as his first HF antenna.

And I would like to suggest you the same.

Then if you will have enough room on ur garden, you can make a well tuned dipole antenna.

Good thing on HF is, that almost any (long enough) piece of wire can be tuned out to work reasonably on HF. Unfortunately the same does not work for the upper bands (UHF, S-band). There some different and interesting challenges.

[Electro Fan]

Echoing some of the other posts, I think you will find that if you have the space and the installation wherewithal that a wire antenna - a standard (half wave) dipole will be your best first antenna.  It shouldn't cost much for the materials and if you can get it installed high enough you should get very good performance. 

As for bands, if you want lots of opportunity for DX and not take up too much space lengthwise (horizontally in your yard) and not have to go too high vertically, you should probably consider 20 Meters and if you can, also 40 Meters.  With 20 Meters and 40 Meters you can probably operate around the clock (day and night) if the bands cooperate.  With 20 and 40 you should be able to have plenty of opportunities to DX for SSB, data, and CW if you happen to do/enjoy those.  If you don't have the horizontal space or you can't get the antennas high enough then there are other options including verticals but if you can do a wire antenna I'd go a dipole at least as a starter solution.

As for height, if you can get it a quarter-wave length up, that would be good and a half-wave length would be even better.  I think higher will help your take off angle which will help you with DX, but there is another rule of thumb that says "a dipole should always be at least 20 feet higher than the height you were able to achieve."

http://www.csgnetwork.com/freqwavelengthcalc.html

https://www.qsl.net/aa3rl/ant2.html

20 Meters (exact wavelength depends on specific frequency within band)
Half wave length ~34 feet (horizontal space you will need for wire)
Quarter wave length ~17 feet (preferred minimum height above ground)

40 Meters (exact wavelength depends on specific frequency within band)
Half wave length ~68 feet  (horizontal space you will need for wire)
Quarter wave length ~34 feet  (preferred minimum height above ground)

 

[Yansi]

Funny to specify wavelength of metric bands in feet. Jeez those imperialists... 

I would also recommend getting/building an antenna tuner, may help a lot to get the most power out.

[NivagSwerdna]

My first antenna was a 1/2 size G5RV which I strung up in my back Garden.  Within a few days I had a QSO, (with my second-hand FT-890AT) with Oz on the other side of the planet.  (Their antenna was probably better than mine)

[xrunner]

40 meter dipole over the house.

[Electro Fan]

Funny to specify wavelength of metric bands in feet. Jeez those imperialists... 

LOL - it is so true.

It apparently was a tough sell or it would have happened by now but if 20 years ago the U.S. had switched to metric however far along the U.S. is, we would be some amount further. 

For the average / non-science oriented person it doesn't seem to matter (people get used to not doing math much less connecting the dots in various units of measurement) but once you start to do almost anything beyond the most basic day to day stuff metric sure is attractive; and even for simple day to day life I think people would find metric very helpful.  My guess is that in the current environment switching to metric is not likely to make it toward the top of the U.S. national priority list.  I get that it's a tough switch but if we ever got there I think we would look back and say why did we wait so long?

Anyway, back to antennas....

[bd139]

The imperial thing annoys me because the ARRL handbook has all the conversion constants hard coded into the equations in it. Should be metric throughout!

[tautech]

The imperial thing annoys me because the ARRL handbook has all the conversion constants hard coded into the equations in it. Should be metric throughout!

What's wrong with Hz to name a band ? 

If we look at all the bands our governments administer and license they're listed for whatever actual frequency they cover....nothing to do with wavelength.