Question About Long wire Antenna

[FLA2760]

Hi

I am relatively new at monitoring SW and would like to know which type of wire is best for a long wire antenna? I have bell wire and standard speaker wire on hand. Any suggestions? I will be connecting the long wire to my Grundig Satellit 750. Thanks in advance.

 

[n0nhp]

Almost any wire will do to receive the signals. The speaker wire would probably not be too good for outside use as the UV light from the sun will quickly degrade the insulation (not that the insulation makes enough difference to matter, it will just get ratty looking quickly). The bell wire will be fine as well.
You have also stumbled into one of the hot buttons for antenna enthusiasts. You have not said how long your "long wire" is going to be. Most new monitors will put up a 30 to 50' wire and call it a long wire. That will be a long wire on frequencies above about 30MHz. What you will have is a random wire and it will work just fine, especially if you get it as high as you can, feed it with coax and ground the shield of the coax where it enters the house. You do not need expensive 50 ohm coax, RG6 75 ohm coax will work just as well for receive. Any slight SWR is more than offset as your antenna will not be resonant on any specific frequency anyhow (be quiet geeks, he's a newby don't confuse the issue ;-).
For frequency tips and general HF monitoring conversation, come join us on
irc://irc.starchat.net/wunclub or
irc://irc.starchat.net/swl

Bruce (BruceB)

 

[k9rzz]

Agreed. Use what you have. The problem I've had in the past with speaker wire on HF, is that all the strands get oxidation on them which lends to the wire picking up AM broadcast band interference across HF. Never had that problem with stranded house wire, just speaker wire. It's okay for a while, but in the long term think about switching to a different kind of wire.

 

[GKolo]

My Kaito 1103 came with a piece of wire for a antenna, I have it run out side from the radio and attached to the back of the garage. Reception is not great !
Should i use the coax to go from the radio to outside then attach the long wire that came with the radio ? Wire is about 8 feet off the ground now.
The wire that came with the radio is about 30 feet long.
As it sits now the radio is not enjoyable to listen to because nothing comes in. Even my EAM on 11175 are weak with alot of static.

 

[W2NJS]

Use what you have and it will work okay...BUT...if you don't want to be bothered with regular repairs to a wire antenna that's actually physically not up to the job get a roll of #18 stranded copper antenna wire and put that up. It'll last a long, long time compared to wire that's not intended for outdoor use subject to swaying in the wind, being loaded down due to long length, etc.

 

[ridgescan]

I went to Home Depot 3 years ago and bought 105' of #12 solid soft naked copper wire for $22 and it's been great-even after taking down and putting back up a couple times, strong resilient stuff that doesn't break-just unroll it and give it a stretch. Lasts forever.

 

[ka3jjz]

My Kaito 1103 came with a piece of wire for a antenna, I have it run out side from the radio and attached to the back of the garage. Reception is not great !
Should i use the coax to go from the radio to outside then attach the long wire that came with the radio ? Wire is about 8 feet off the ground now.
The wire that came with the radio is about 30 feet long.
As it sits now the radio is not enjoyable to listen to because nothing comes in. Even my EAM on 11175 are weak with alot of static.

Did you check the local/DX switch on the side of the radio? Chances are it's in the local position...Mike

 

[GKolo]

Did you check the local/DX switch on the side of the radio? Chances are it's in the local position...Mike

Checked, Re checked and checked again.....I wish thats all it was.

 

[Skeith]

Not sure if anything has been resolved on this issue.

My random wire is an end fed 45foot pice of galvanized aircraft cable. I used a split bolt connector to connect it to a piece of RG6 (shor piece about 3') sealed up the connection with self splicing rubber tape. The antenna is strung from my chimney using a pice of PVC pipe about 3" long as an insulator and anchored with some nylon rope. Other end is strung actoss to a 2x4 attached to my fence post that was used to hold a bird house (birds love the antenna). Same anchoring technique there, PVC insulator and nylon rope. Height above ground is about 16'.

Now for the feedline. I ran RG6, about 50ft from my desk out the basement window and up to the roof. Here is connects to a 9:1 balun I made in a piece of ABS pipe with F connectors on either end and a groudning lug on the side. The 9:1 balun is essentially an impedance matching transformer to make the high impedance of the wire antenna look closer to the 50-75 ohm impedance the radios expect to see. Dont know how close it gets, but it does help with noise rejection.

the piece of RG6 off of the antenna wire is connected to the high impedance connector on the balun, feedline to the shack on the low impedance side, and a piece of #8 awg RW90 off the ground lug to a 5' ground rod.

Inside I have the feedline routed through a network of standard CATV coax switches to the various receivers. I use this antenna on my shortwave, scanners, a car stereo for AM/FM DX etc. use it all the way from 150khz up to 1200Mhz with fairly decent results across the band. I regularily DX AM BCB from as far as 1600Km away. Any time of the day I can pull one in.

The balun helped alot, and the ground made a HUGE difference.

 

[ridgescan]

The balun helped alot, and the ground made a HUGE difference.

I agree about the ground-same here. A lot of SWLers out there pay little mind to a ground situation. I can't stress it enough. I still need to try Majoco's idea like they used on ships- of a ground wire inside conduit shielding it from antenna to earth. Just need to figure out how to make it stealth

 

[E-Man]

My random wire is an end fed 45foot pice of galvanized aircraft cable.

Interesting, I plan on installing a zip line out of 5/16 guy wire (thanks con ed) as soon as it warms up. hmmm....

 

[Token]

Hi

I am relatively new at monitoring SW and would like to know which type of wire is best for a long wire antenna? I have bell wire and standard speaker wire on hand. Any suggestions? I will be connecting the long wire to my Grundig Satellit 750. Thanks in advance.

As others have said, use what you have, try it out. Lighter wire not meant for outside use will result in shorter life of the antenna, but they are also cheap and easy to build so no big deal. Pretty much anything conductive can be used for an antenna, if you can get it installed in a good location and it is long/wide/big enough.

Small point of fact, you are probably talking about a “random wire” and not a “long wire”. A long wire antenna is an antenna over one wavelength for a specific frequency of operation. A random wire antenna is just putting up however many feet of straight wire you can fit in an area. A random wire might be a long wire also, depending on its length and the frequency you are talking about. For example a 50 foot random wire would only be a “long wire” at frequencies above 20 MHz, and a 30 foot random wire would not be a long wire on any HF frequency.

People will often understand what you mean when you interchange long wire and random wire, but that is mostly because people have gotten lazy in the use of both terms. The two kinds of antennas actually DO have different properties.

T!

 

[ab3a]

Many hams swear by a kind of wire known generically as copper coated steel or "Copperweld" by trade name. You can find it at any hardware store with welding supplies. It isn't nearly as expensive as plain copper wire.

It is strong. It is not prone to stretch. It has good conductivity. With some ceramic egg insulators, your antenna can last a long long time.

 

[majoco]

Ceramic egg insulators are getting hard to find at the right price (aka cheap!) - I bought a pack of five electric fence insulators for $2 from a local farm suppliers - just like larger versions of the "eggs".

 

[LtDoc]

The wire used for antennas should be at least strong enough to hold up it's own weight and a little more. If length is important to you then using wire that won't stretch too much, or pre-stretching that wire would be a good idea. It typically isn't going to make any difference if that wire is insulated or not, that insulation is 'transparent' to RF. Using more than one size of wire works just fine as long as the connections are done properly, won't pull-apart. Some wire is just easier to handle, copper for instance is easy to solder, aluminum not so easy.
Considering all that, use what you have the most of...
- 'Doc

 

[ay00]

I used this video

Essentially, I followed the instructions in this youtube video. LONG WIRE ANTENNA (For Shortwave DXing ) Part 1 - YouTube

I have ~45 feet of RG6 strung up (all I had space for) but I have not had a chance to test it because I'm waiting on an upconverter for my RTLSDR. I'm hoping it will work well. If not I might break down and actually purchase an Alpha Delta but I really want to DIY everything on the cheap as much as humanly possible. If anyone has better suggestions, I'm open to them.

edit: I should add that I'm looking mostly for the 40-10m bands but I'd like to receive whatever is possible with a Ham it up/Janielectronic upconverter.

 

[LtDoc]

I have to say that the author of that video isn't exactly well informed about several of the opinions he expressed (no matter what his source). After saying that, he does show -one- way of assembling an antenna and it should work.
RG-6 coax cable, as it's used in the video, is simply a long length of wire with no shielding. If that shield isn't grounded then it does not act as an RF shield. The whole thing, from the end of it to the receiver's antenna jack is the antenna. That means that a single ordinary wire would serve the same purpose. And since that shield isn't connected to anything the impedance of that cable isn't 75 ohms anymore. The impedance of the antenna is going to be independent of the coax cable used in it's construction. (Not a biggy since a receiver doesn't 'care' much about impedance like a transmitter does.)
Have fun.
- 'Doc

 

[ay00]

So where should I go from here?

 

[Ed_Seedhouse]

So where should I go from here?

Just hang as much wire as you can outside as and high as you can. If you get too much noise connect a piece of coax to the receiver, run it outside, ground the shield (outer conductor) as well as possible and connect the center conductor to the wire.

A modern receiver should only need ten or twenty feet outside for decent results. Forty or more if you want reliable DX reception.

If the noise is really bad and you can't get a good ground, then loop the far end of the wire around and connect it to the outer conductor of the coax. Make the loop as big as you can.

Of course you can get all fancy and get better results. But a simple long wire is enough for a start and should let you hear shortwave broadcast stations and stronger local hams if the receiver will decipher SSB signals.

The more you can tell us about your receiver and what the results you are getting now are like the more helpful we can be.

 

[ay00]

I'm going to be using an RTLSDR USB stick, (I have both the E4000 and 8280T) in combination with either the Ham It Up v1 and/or the Jani electronics upconverter (DBM HF Converter for RTL2832U E4000 Rtl SDR SDR Radio Funcube Ezcap Ham R820T | eBay) and SDR#. I have both on the way but essentially they operate similarly.

I was thinking about ordering the MFJ-1778 (MFJ1778 160 Thru 6 Meter All Band Doublet Antenna Canada). Would this improve my reception capability?


edit: Also, I don't need a tuner for any of this, do I?