Yes, antennas are important, and the bigger the better, but...

I worked Great Britain from Massachusetts on 10 watts with a simple 40 meter
dipole up about 20 feet. It wasn't ideal, but it worked. I worked Estonia
from Oregon on SSB (all tubes, too) with 100 watts with a 10 meter half-wave
loop pinned to the ceiling of a spare room in a 1-story rented house. You
_will_ do _much_ better with a "real" antenna system, but you _can_ do
_amazing_ things with a few pieces of wire and some creativity.

So if you can, by all means put up the heavy metal in the sky, but don't
stop if you can't do it right off. Get a copy of the ARRL antenna book, or
maybe a copy of the Handbook from the year your rig was born. You live out
in the country so you don't need to worry about stealth antennas -- if you
have trees and aren't afraid of heights they make very good supports for
long wire antennas. Just think about who you want to talk to this year and
aim the antenna appropriately.

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On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 00:00:19 UTC, (geojunkie) wrote:


Antennas. A ham station is the antenna farm. The rest of it is
much less important. Do you have the room to put up a 40 meter
dipole? 66 feet linear length. Get it up at least 40 feet, the
higher the better. For 20 and above, a basic antenna is an
3 element trap yagi. Again 40 feet minimum height, 80 is even
better.