On the internet there are many ¨How To¨ antenna sites , and this is great.
When I first got into radio there was a drought of reliable information , but now days there perhaps is too much information and it all can be quite confusing.

So this write up is going to be somewhat different , this is not going to be a How To , but instead it will focus on ¨WHY¨.

I am not going to tell you how much wire to buy and where to cut this or that.
Hopefully though at the end of these several pages you will have gained a clearer understanding of basic antenna fundamentals and how it applies to short wave listening.

From there you will be able to make more informed choices as to what sort of antenna set up is best for you.



What you will not find here are antenna designs that work extremely well but  :

they don't fit into an average sized back yard
they require specialized mount systems (mast + rotating beams etc.)
they require a university degree to set up
they require bucket loads of money


All must be practical , low to medium complexity and cost and most importantly of all work in a real world environment.





Shortwave listeners often start with small portable radios with internal antennas but soon find that these radios are quite limited.
Eventually they will be forced to bight the bullet and buy a desktop receiver , one likely made by one of the larger communications equipment companies.


 



These radios are designed to perform best with a properly designed and made antenna.

The components in the front ends of these radios tuner sections are specially selected to work correctly with an expected antenna impedance of 50 ohms.

For instance a length of wire can be hung out of the 50 Ohm antenna socket and sure , you will hear stations , but a simple random length of wire has an impedance of many 100's of Ohms and is not tuned to any one desired frequency.

This will give a doubly wammy of losses that will kill signal strength.


Give the radio a suitably tuned antenna with the impedance it likes and all should work very well.






Point to remember , We need is an antenna that is effective at the frequency that we want to listen to and that satisfies the radios impedance requirements.


This doesn't sound to hard ,,, and ....