Top 10 Wire Antennas for HF Ham Radio

Wire is the greatest gift to HF QRP portable there is for those who hate spending big bucks on antennas (ME !).

The 41' random vertical absolutely rocks and it does work just fine on the Spiderbeams 12 meter mast you just have to rotate the mast as you raise it.

An OCFD 80-6m, inverted V is my main antenna at the station. So versatile and works great! Western Australia to Asiatic Russia from the Louisiana Gulf Coast, it talks great!

I liked this video before I even started watching 😂. Thanks for all you do Walt! Loving the channel.

Just wanted to let you know I really appreciate your videos. Just getting back into the hobby after a 7-8 year break and have watched a couple of your videos - good video quality, nice audio, solid content and honest opinions of what has and has not worked for you. Thank you. Looking forward to watching more.

Great antenna roundup Walt! You are spot on with Tim and his antennas. I have several of his antennas and they always perform!

Fantastic video! by far the most useful I've watched about home-made HF wire antennas. Really appreciate the drawings. Thanks a lot! This video will definitely be my #1 reference when I start messing with poles, wires, insulators and baluns/ununs next spring/summer.

Great Vid as always and i have been doing all my home QSO's on random wire 35.5' with a home brew 9:1 unun slooper out the window like you had shown in one of your past vids in Poland after getting my g90 and my general in aug of this year able to get out to Spain, brazil from WV all on 20W . Just bought 200" of 16g speaker wire from Woot when they out them on sale for $5 per 100' can't wait to make some more wire antennas from your channel this winter Thanks for all the great content

Thank you for sharing your info with the ham community.

👍Good stuff Walt. Glad you mentioned delta loops. An A-shape loop may be an easier option when fed at centre or end of the bottom wire and held up with just a single mast.

Excellent video again, Walt. My main home aerial is the off-centre-fed dipole 20m long, while I tend to use EFHW verticals for portable / QRP work, usually with a simple radial set to convert to a quarter wave. I also built your 10m delta loop earlier this year and got good results from it. 73 de M1GWZ.

I have watched a lot of youtube videos about antennas and yours is by far the best for me, the simple plain explanation of your antennas is a god send, I have ADHD so when YouTubers start on about formulas and charts I lose interest real quick, your format is really good I look forward to many more videos from you, regards, Ian

Good morning Walt had some fantastic results with my inverted V bell wire antenna along with my home built transformers, but my 10m wire delta loop has been the most rewarding regarding to use. Normally deployed on a 10m squid pole, image on my QRZ page. I used 75ohm coax to drop the feed point impedance swr is around 1.2.1 across the 10m band. Been a pleasure watching your videos have a great Christmas and look forward to 2024, 73 M7CVK Tony

Great video, Walt! I threw together an inverted V for ten meters a couple of months ago. I just cut up some speaker wire and hung it from a makeshift pole made of PVC. I hooked it up and my first contact was Sarajevo from central KS! The only downside to the V is that it is HIGHLY directional. I found myself hearing the same few operators over and over and would only hear new DX when I went out in the yard and moved the ends around. Now I'm working on a 10m Moxon, but this is a much more difficult build. Thanks for the great videos! 73 W2ASH Jason

In my current setup, where I have only a window and a tree in front of me, I used an EFRW 41 foot antenna combined with a 9:1 unun to cover the 40-10 meter bands using just 5 watts, for portable my fav it’s Delta loop antenna’s, thx 4 ur vid Walt 73

As someone who just recently purchased an SDR dongle and wants to improve their Rx ability within the HF spectrum I find these videos very helpful even though this is aimed at a very different audience. Thanks for putting the time into the videos.

Many thanks from Australia, just getting back to HF 10 meters, and building my own antennas, it is amazing how inexpensive a good antenna can be made from a few lengths of wire and an insulator, the most expensive part is a telescopic pole.

This is an absolutely great video! so much helpful information about antennas!

Wow so many information condensed is this video! Thanks!! I like your videos about wire antennas! 73!

Hey Walt, I'm sitting here with a pile of parts trying to decide what to build. Great, Great video. Gave me so many ideas. First build will be the 4:1. My 7.2 m pole is on the way. I might even build two. If I come up with something new and improved, I'll send it to you to try. Well 4:1, here I come. Thanks again for the ideas.