Ham Radio Wire Antennas

Your first Amateur radio antenna. Or the antenna you hide in your attic, because of the coming Zombie invasion of course. Whatever your reason for having a ham radio wire antenna, whether its your wife, neighbors, HOA ( I hate those), small yard, your renting, your in an apartment or safety reasons or any other reason. Rejoice its a good choice.

The all time favorite Ham Radio wire antenna is the half-wavelength, center-fed, dipole. It is easy to build and it performs adequately. The dipole is the reference used to measure the performance of the other antennas. It's the base line. The dipole is a great reference point for amateur radio because you can actually build one (yes you can). And on some of the lower bands, most amateur radio operators will be using these. So you don't have to worry about pile-ups your never going to be able to break. There is also less competition on these bands since most everyone is using the same type of antenna as you... A wire. As well as the lower bands although very noisy at times are very forgiving regarding antennas, so a dipole antenna works just great. Unlike on the upper UHF bands where you need a 11 element plus yagi just to hear anything at any decent distance.

Ham Radio Wire Antennas ....or....Copper Wire Antennas...have great benefits:

They are inexpensive to build and make. or they're dozens of pre-made designs built by other amateur operators to choose from.

They are simple to put up in the air. (find a tree and your good to go).

Or if your still worried about Zombies, you can put one in your attic.

You can even really cheap out and feed them with inexpensive feed line...like ladder line! Wow what could be better?

Well sorry there is no Free lunch here either:

Wire antennas often create RF interference and can result in RF at your radio shack, on your TV, in your computer speakers, or even better your neighbors speakers.

The problem is this, the feed line, as well as everything connected it becomes part of the RF radiating system. Many people think that just because you have a 1/2 wave dipole you will be immune to this type of interference. They also are under the misconception that changing the feed line to some mysterious secret length, or use another type of feed line these problems will be eliminated. They won't. This problem usually is worse with a End-Fed antenna that the manufacturer told you doesn't need a counterpoise. Well I can tell you that a counterpoise will be made, whether you know it or not. Something will be used as the counterpoise, most likely its going to be the feedline.

Another issue which involves the above problem is, that you will have increased noise levels. If you have RF leaking out, you have Noise leaking in. Period.

So how can you stop the mass hysteria of chasing RF and interference (you'll never quite find) around your home. There are a couple of things that I would do in my opinion. One: Move the antenna and the feed system as far away as possible away from your house.

Two,Three, Four, etc. Use a good grounding system outside. Use a lightning arrestor outside where you are grounded, use a current Choke at the connection to the antenna, and another one before the feedline gets into the house. Use stock radio power with wires and you will most likely be okay, adding 1000+ watts to any wire system and your asking for a knock on your door. Copper Wires and Circuit boards are soulmates, they want to be together. Your RF leaving your wire is looking for a Circuit board to excite, this is most likely going to be in some of your electronics or more likely your neighbors.

If you are working the lower bands, you do not need alot of power anyway. Mother Nature will take care of you there, and even might lift up her skirt and give you a DX peek a boo every now and then on 160/80 meters, even with your 100 watts and a shortened dipole. If you decided to use a end fed long wire antenna with no counterpoise and 1500+ watts of power, your career as an amateur radio operator will be short. or at the very least expensive from the eventual large FCC fine you'll be paying.

I realize it seems I am going off on ham radio wire antennas here, but to be honest you should use these practices on any antenna system you have, and you and your wife and neighbors will be alot happier, you never know you might just be invited to their block party even with the 7 element 20 meter Yagi 50 feet above your roof.

OK What is a half wave dipole antenna? How do you design a loop antenna? What is an Off Center fed Dipole? Lets find out.

As mentioned on another page, there are at least 140 varieties of wire antennas and probably dozens more then that. I am not going to go through them all, only the ones I personally have experience with, like everything else on this WA2OOO.com website. And I don't have the room.

1. The Dipole Antenna........... works very well, easy to construct and install, has a figure 8 pattern in books, but closer to omni directional in reality, especially if its not very high. I recommend it highly as a wire antenna. A million words and pages have been devoted to this antenna, so I dont want to repeat others here. This is a monoband antenna. Best fed with coax, although you could use ladder-line which will transform the impedance from 75 ohms into who knows what and you'll be chasing mysterious SWR demons forever if your into that. Many people assume mistakenly that just because you might have a 20 meter dipole, you can now get all the bands without much tuning. This is an error. Straight dipoles are meant to be SINGLE band antennas. You make think with your slick tuner that you can get alot of other bands with it, but it will be terribly inefficient on those bands. If you want to get more bands, buy or make a different wire antenna. There is a dipole antenna calculator at the end of this page, but if your lazy this will give you a head start. (this is an antenna you can easily make with a bunch of wire from home depot and a 1-1 balun, or you can buy them, store bought ones are usually too long and you may have to cut them some)

2. The Inverted V....sounds sexy and looks exotic doesn't it? Sorry its just a half wave dipole antenna with the ends (legs) sloping down. Same decent performance as above but even more omni directional. Depending upon the angle of the "V" legs the Inverted V antenna will be 2 - 6% longer then the standard dipole. The calculator in the link will show you by how much. (this is an antenna you can make and probably should because the resonant point changes for each installation and with angle of the legs)

3. The Loop antenna ( personal fave )... its actually just a one element Cubical Quad. A full wavelength wire bent into the shape of a loop ( delta or square ), you'll enjoy lower noise and better gain then the dipole above. ( just like the cubical quad versus yagi ). Its litterally the same thing, just one element. Usually built as a single band antenna. Can be built for Vertical or Horizontal radiation just like a Quad. Sometimes people call this a Skywire loop antenna, so check if it s bigger then a full wavelength or not. It can be fed with coax and a 2 - 1 balun or use a section of 75 OHM coax to match it. But really its not that hard to get into the wire length ballpark you'll need. For example 40 meters is not only a ham radio band, its also the length of a 1 wavelength loop at those frequencys. How long is 40 meters? Well 1 meter is 3.28 feet long, so 40 meters is 40 X 3.28 = 131.2 feet long. Or you can do 1005/frequency. However thats a rough guide as the wire size, covered or uncovered and a bunch of other things come into practice. If you want to be more precise, as I am sure you would be, check the wire antenna calculator link I have created at the bottom of this page. As with all loops they are very versatile, you can feed it like below for vertical polarization, making it a good DX antenna, feed it horizontally, even place the whole loop horizontal and feed it anywhere you'd like! In a corner, in the middle of a wire, or 1/4 of the way up a wire as shown below. Try a loop antenna if you get a chance and have the space & supports. You WILL like it. (you can buy these antennas, but I much prefer making them, because the wire length is not exactly always the same, depending upon your frequency choice, and the balun might come in at 2-1 to 2.5-1, some even wind up using a 4 -1 balun)

4.The End-Fed long wire or multiple of 1/2 wave length wire. Also known as the (EFHW antenna)...... They do work, not as good as a loop antenna or a dipole antenna, but sometimes this is the only alternative you can run. make sure you read the RF interference section above at least 31 times before installing one. Okay maybe twice. These are used alot during club station stuff and by portable operators on mini expeditions. What could be simpler? The pattern of these is difficult to predict at best. My opinion is they will work better with a short wire counterpoise on the opposite side of the long wire for the "ground", otherwise you are using the coax as the counterpoise, this usually has bad results as far as stable SWR, and worse the antenna will just not work very well. The Germans figured this out in 1909, when this antenna was called the "Zeppelin" antenna. The further you try to feed a wire farther away from the center of two wires, the impedance will get higher, by the time you get to a End-Fed your looking at a 9 - 1 balun. Not exactly a model of efficiency. If you add a counterpoise of wire, you bring the impedance down and might get away with a 4 -1 or 6 -1 Balun or even a long section of 75 ohm coax, before you connect your 50 ohm regular coax to it.. (you can make these easily, its just a length of wire, but matching it to multibands, will require a tuner without question, try to make the antenna as long as possible and you'll have better results.) There are reported to be some "magic" lengths that work better then others....I tend to doubt that, and since your using a tuner anyway, whats the point?

5. The Multiband dipole antenna.AKA Fan Dipole.. same as the dipole with other bands (lengths of wire) attached to the feed point, again a Choke is necessary here no exceptions. SWR not always perfect as advertised or that good frankly. Keep it as far away from anything else as possible. Fed with coax. Depending upon the guy who makes it, they work either very good, or fair at best. Check reviews on these on eham.net ( you usually buy these outright, and let someone else deal with the wire mess).

6. The G5VR antenna...very popular...cheap... not as efficient as a multiband dipole antenna or other multiband antennas but gets you on all the bands, with fair performance. SWR also not always as predicted. Lots of good ones for sale and even more poor ones for sale. Its generally 51 feet a side or 102 feet, and fed in the center like a dipole except that its fed by (ladderline) twinlead of 29-35 feet. Better in my opinion if fed with 50 or even better 75 ohm coax. This is an antenna that can really make you grind your teeth at night. But its Cheap ! Not really a full 10-80 multiband antenna, but often sold as such. Since this is usually the first antenna a new General class guy gets his hands on, its usually run low and through trees, bushes, around buildings etc. And partly because of that it works like crap. This changes when the seasoned amateur then decides to put his next antenna away from his house, away from trees and buildings, and it works much better. ( like all antennas do ). He then announces the G5VR was junk! When in fact if it was also put in the clear, it would have worked much better. I am not saying by any means that a G5RV is a world beater....its not ...this is a case of you get what you pay for. (these are usually antennas you buy, unless you are a real gluton for punishment.)

7. The OCFD ( Off Center Fed Dipole ) ... decent SWR on all bands, decent performance on lower bands, lots of little lobes on higher bands, the guy directly south of you might be "S9" while the guy 10 degrees west of him might be "S2". Tough to predict the radiation pattern (sorry Eznec) but a good alternative to the single band dipole antenna if you prefer. This antenna is usually fed 1/3 from the end, in other words its a 1/3 wire lenght, feed point, followed by 2/3 lenght of wire. The longer the total wire the better. However I do like these antennas, they work almost as good as a mono-band dipole would. Almost but not quite, and the pattern as mentioned is more difficult to predict. BUT your on most of the bands with good SWR. In other words Less frustrating then many other types of wire antennas. Most popular already built models are 135 feet long. They work well. ( you can build or buy these, they are as simple as a straight dipole antenna, just with the feed point moved to a 1/3 - 2/3 arrangement instead of 50-50 like a dipole. Balun will be a 4 - 1.)

8. The Carolina Windom... very similar to the OCFD, except it purposely uses the (22 feet or so) feed line for vertical radiation. ( Uh Oh ). works decent but it needs a choke after the 22 feet of vertical wire. It also needs precise measurements of everything to get the SWR right where you want it. Sort of an old school antenna, but still somewhat popular. There are lots of similar versions of these, using slightly different wire lengths, all claiming to be the "improved version". As of 2019 I think top manufacturer of these has retired. You can still find some versions online. Its best to buy this antenna.

9. The Skywire Loop Antenna.. similar to the regular loop antenna, just a big large random length of wire in the shape of a loop running either as high as possible or low along the ground for the lower bands. It needs a good tuner at the shack to tune this bad boy. That being said there is alot of wire out there (sometimes 600+ feet) of recieving Capture Area, and to Transmit from. It works well. if you have 3 or 4 big towers and attach it to each leg of the towers someplace....you have yourself a butt kicking omni directional antenna. Even the lower in height ones work pretty good. Tune Tune Tune for any band you would like. Mostly used on lower bands 80 - 160. Also made as just one big ole random length of wire cut into 1/4"s. ( this is an experimenters antenna, that you build, find a Balun that will transform you close to 50 ohms on the band you like, and you'll be able to work a couple of multiples of the next higher bands )

10. The "I don't care what you say I'm throwing this wire out the window" antenna. Listen enjoy yourself and the bands, watch the RF in the shack, and if QRP is your thing then more power to you. It makes no difference to me what you use, nor should it bother you. Just enjoy the amateur bands. I would comment that throwing a random length of wire out the window will work, but its more a matter of luck then having good practice.

IMPORTANT: Most OEM balun manufacturers will sell you a simple single core 1:1 or 4:1 ( OCFD, Loops, etc.) balun. These baluns will not fully stop common mode current from running down your coax into the shack and causing you issues. YOU MUST buy a more expensive dual-core Balun, which will work as advertised. There is no free lunch, you either pay the piper or your going to get RFI in your shack. All of the antennas above will need one of these dual-core baluns. Period. There are no shortcuts. See the page on Tuners and Baluns.

My experience is with most of these. You will not get much better performance then the Half wave Dipole Antenna or Loop antenna. The one exception is a Extended Double Zepp. (this is a 5/8's wave dipole instead of a half wave dipole antenna, but it requires ladder line and a balun and a tuner to work). Its Big and a pain in the ass, so I didn't included it above, besides I hate ladder line. But if you want a bit more DB gain then a dipole antenna particularily in the vertical configuration on 10 meters especially, this antenna works well. As mentioned on here and on other pages, I am not a fan of ladder line. All antennas fed with ladder line NEED a tuner to be used with them on every band. Ever hear of a symmetrical matchbox tuner? I didn't think so. Well thats what you need to tune ladder line fed antennas properly. All tuners made today are asymmetrical, meaning they are inefficient when used with ladder line. And you will have more loss then when using coax in most instances. Except where your coax (lmr 400 type) run is a long one, like over 250 feet in length. Use better coax and this loss disappears. OK. Back to the antennas I mentioned above:

I personally think these will be the top performers. I have modeled and used many other types ( Rhombics, Double Zepps, Slopers, Doublets, EDZ's,etc. ) and like the crazy Yagi antenna designs that you can come up with, there are hundreds more complicated designs with wire antennas. Now I just dont think they are worth the time and the increase in gain versus one of the above. Most of them are just too big for the average yard. You'll find yourself trying to build letter "H's" and letter "L's", "Z's" etc out of wire and then trying to support them with makeshift fiberglass poles or similar, until your almost finished, and then you wife yells out the window "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? GET RID OF THAT MONSTROSITY" If you have acreas of space then by all means experiment. For others who may disagree with the loop antenna and the dipole antenna mostly being the top performers I can hear it now "I built a capacitive loaded, ladder line fed, no balun, collinear hentenna, that blew away my friends 6 element yagi on a 75 foot tower".

Number one . No you didn't, Number two . Okay great, Are there other wire antennas that can give you good SWR, Multiband capability, and High Gain in one direction. Yes. Even multi-element wire anetnnas! But I am not building them, nor will I in the future, I'm just not into torture. But you can if you'd like and I wish you good luck and would love to hear of your real results! To me its the simpler the better.

So here's all the dimensions you need to build a wire antenna. Wire_Antenna_Calculator

Like I said if you want to spend several lifetimes building wire antennas,

and need to know every wire antenna version ever made.......then knock yourself out here : A Zillion Wire Antennas