Difference between revisions of "HF Antennas"

Revision as of 15:36, 11 August 2021

No doubt about it, without a good antenna, no matter how good the receiver, you will not hear much of anything. These links should help even a newcomer feel comfortable about selecting and installing a HF antenna. There's several technical links for the experimenters in us, along with several commercial retailers. Warm up those soldering irons and get busy!

If you're a newcomer or old hat, or anywhere in between, when installing antennas, Safety First.
Make this link a must read. Don't become a statistic!

Commercial Retailers

Active Antennas (Indoors)

Active Antennas (Outdoor)

Bonito Antennas page
- Bonito Boni-Whip (via Universal Radio)
- NTi Wideband Antennas (via Universal Radio)
Cross Country Wireless HF Active Antenna
Dressler Active Antennas sold by Broadband Power Technology
DX Engineering ARAV4-2P Active Antennas
MFJ 1024
Pacific Antenna Active Antenna kit
RF Systems DX-1 Pro Active Antenna

SWLing.com Aritcles

Other Manufacturers/Suppliers

Homebrew and Technical

Where to start?

What is HAAT?
What is ERP?
Antenna Basics
If you are using a portable and want to add a bit of protection against static electricity, or want to add a crude RF Gain control, see this article for a simple project you can build.

What about indoors?

Technical and construction topics

A Waterproof Shielded Housing for Active Short Monopole Antennas (PDF)
Active Antennas KB6RWX
Amateur 7 Element Yagi calculator
An Attic Coaxial Cable Trap Dipole for 10,15,20,30,40 and 80 Meters
Antenna Lessons from Old Timers (EHam article)
Antenna Projects of Frank N4SPP
Beverage Antenna
Bobtails and Half Squares
Broadband Butterfly Terminated Dipole (YouTube video)
The Broomstick Antenna
Complementary Push Pull Amplifiers for Active Antennas (PDF)
DIY Antenna Mounting Bracket
End Fed Half wave wire
The EWE in the Garden
49:1 End Fed Half Wave Antenna 80-10 meters (YouTube video)
Need a coax attachment to feed a fan dipole? Take a look at the Fan Dipole Attachment designed by chgomonitor
Feeding a Folded Dipole
Grounding Bulkhead with supressors for your scanning station
- Although the above article mentions a scanning station, this applies to HF, too
Grounding is Key to Good Reception (Blog article)
HFLink ALE Antennas (fan dipoles)
Homebrew rotatable ferrite antenna via SWLing.com
Joe Carr's Technical Notes - via DXing.com
Hard Core DX Antennas Page - Technical Discussions, Plans, Hidden Antennas and more
How to Build a Simple Linear Loaded Dipole for low noise SW Listening via SWLing.com
Magnetic Longwire Balun - Not really a Balun
Magnetic Longwire Balun - A Con or Not?
Monitoring Times - All About Antennas
PA0FRI Technical Information for Hams
Reinventing the tape dipole via eHam
Shortened Folded Dipoles via eHam
Six Band HF Center-Loaded Off Center Fed Dipole
Stealth Antennas - Amazon Kindle
The Terminated Tilted Folded Dipole (T2FD)
The Folded Dipole Antenna
The Snake Antenna (eHam)
The Vactrol for MW and LW DXing
VE7SL -PA0RDT E Probe Antenna - Blog Notes

Indexed Links

AMANDX Indexed Articles

AMANDX = Association of Manitoba DXers. Their home page is here

Reviews

Mailing Lists/forums

End Fed Half Wave Antennas (Facebook)

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 * [http://www.grahn-spezialantennen.de/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2NVfLyVdvMEQK5Ha87bb6ZHyxETwuGwoklFIh_Ai8i1gYNMBPa2QW7EDo  Grahn GS5 Active Antennas] (in German)
 * [https://mfjenterprises.com/collections/antenna/products/mfj-1020c MFJ 1020C]
+* [http://swling.com/blog/2016/11/a-preliminary-review-of-the-pk-loop-c-loop-hdsw6-18/ A preliminary review of the PK Loop C-LOOP-HDSW6-18]
+** [https://swling.com/blog/2018/01/a-follow-up-review-of-the-pk-loop-c-loop-hdsw6-18-antenna/ A follow up on the PK Loop C-LOOP-HDSW6-18 Antenna]
+** [https://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/5462 eHam review of PKLoop LW antenna]