Wire antenna

[dubir]

Dear All
Please advise
what kind of wire should i use for a simple wire antenna with aligator clips ?

i have ICOM R20 and i try to recive:
HF bands 4-400 Mhtz
Militery 200-400 Mhtz

any idea or simple rule/scheme about how to do it ?

Many thanks
Dubi

 

[ka3jjz]

For HF (4-30 Mhz), I would just put out 10 or 20 foot of wire to a tree (if you can put something outside). Anything more than that, and it's likely the radio will overload. This won't damage anything, but you will hear signals in places where they don't belong. That radio is very sensitive on HF - too sensitive, in my opinion

For the rest, a discone or ScanTenna will do very well. You might need to put some filters on the radio, as it's really not made for a good outdoor antenna and might overload, but this depends greatly on whether you are in an urban environment with a lot of RF floating about or not. Here is an example of a ScanTenna (there are many clones) distributor...

Antennacraft ST2 Scanner Antenna, Antenna Craft ST-2

73 Mike

 

[k9rzz]

Yeah, for a short wire just use whatever you can get your hands on. Such as a telephone cable extension, or speaker wire.. Strip it down to a single strand and put your clip on the end of that.

 

[dubir]

Thanks to all
please advise what kind of wire should i use ?
in metric units please
is 2.5 mm diameter cooper wire is good?

Thanks

 

[kb5udf]

Yep that's fine

Since you are using an antenna commonly referred to as a 'random wire,' the diameter doesn't really matter. So 2.5mm should be fine.

JB

 

[popnokick]

You can put up a simple and inexpensive wire antenna for everything 30mHz and above, too. It's called an off-center fed dipole (OCFD) and works great. Here is everything you need to know:
http://forums.radioreference.com/an...3-off-center-fed-vhf-uhf-vertical-dipole.html