Antennas are the most important part of any radio station. I just wish mine were better! (said every ham everywhere)
Between my residential QTH in a valley and the tiny lot our home is on my station is somewhat disadvantaged from an antenna point of view. Nevertheless, a ham cannot let him- or her-self be overcome by obstacles of the aerial kind, nor any others for that matter. Even the most modest of amateur radio stations can provide the operator with very satisfying and pleasurable experiences.
At present I have only two antennas installed. One is a 2m/70cm vertical and the other is a random length end-fed wire for HF.
2m/70cm
The 2m/70cm antenna is a Diamond X30A vertical. It is mounted on the outside of our home about equal in height to the 2nd story. I feed it via a di-plexer that has my 2m and 70cm radios connected to it. Here is a picture of said antenna and its’ radiation pattern:
Given my residence in the North Saskatchewan river valley I’m not going to do much simplex work but I can hit the local repeaters and that is good.
HF: random length end-fed wire
In the summer of 2023 I figured I needed to do something better for an HF than a 10m 1/4-wave vertical. That was only put up as a temporary measure in the fall of 2022 to get me through the 2022/2023 winter.
So I took it down and set about replacing it with a random length of wire which I would feed from the end. I love wire antennas because they are simple and there is elegance in simplicity.
I strung about 32′ of wire between the house and garage and hooked one end up to a 9:1 transformer to get the impedance closer to 50 ohms. And I set up a counterpoise of about 13′ in length. This runs parallel to the antenna wire at about 2′ off the ground.
50′ of RG-213 runs down to the ham shack where I have a beautiful old EF Johnson Viking Matchbox, the 275W version, to help with matching the impedance of this antenna to my transmitters.
Initial testing with my antenna analyzer shows that I can tune up nicely on 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m. Sadly, 160m, 80m, 60m, 40m and 30m are just not doable with the short length of wire I have. Let alone 2200m or 630m!
The antenna wire is both too short and not high enough but it is what I could do. And that is the essence of antennas for ham radio. One does what one can with what one has.
Antennas are perhaps the most fun per dollar you can have in ham radio. They also can offer the most benefit per dollar you can spend. There’s a ton of theory to digest, there’s as much (or as little) math as you’d like, they can be dirt cheap to build and great fun to experiment with. They offer a great learning experience for any and every ham at any and every knowledge and experience level. Every antenna you build will teach you something.
The ARRL has a number of excellent books on the subject of antennas and I encourage all hams to get at least their big “ARRL Antenna Book”. It’s an excellent publication. Then go make an antenna!