On 2/3/2016 10:47 AM, Michael Wilson wrote:
What is the best antenna for general shortwave listening? I was thinking of building a fan dipole but I wanted to check to see if there is a better alternative. Thanks!

For your "general shortwave listening", a random length long wire
antenna should be just fine. A fan dipole is nice, but more complex to
build -- and you have to cut each dipole for the band of interest; if
you wanted to listen to 4 different bands, you would have eight ends of
the dipoles to mount.

Depending on your receiver and how deeply you are into the hobby, you
would probably not notice much difference between a fan dipole and a
long wire.

P.S. For those not familiar with a fan dipole, it consists of multiple
dipoles with one common center insulator fed with a single coax.
Typically used by frugal hams that want an 80 and 40 meter antennas and
want to use a single coax feed line.

Good luck and let us know what you end up with.