It’s no secret that an antenna is the most important element to listening for shortwave radio, and equally as important for transmitting and receiving for amateur radio. My setup right now is geared toward listening only and I dedicate the majority of my time on HF or shortwave bands. Antenna setup can get wild going up 100 feet or more in the air. However, some of us have restrictions such as an HOA or your SOs threshold for this type of stuff. In either case there is a plethora of solutions out there to meet your needs.

When building my antenna, I wanted it to be stealthy and out of the way with at least 100 feet of cable. I wanted to get some height without attracting too much attention. Here is where I ended up:

Side View:

Top View:

Parts list

  • 2x 100 ft 14 AWG cable
  • 1x 180 ft 24 AWG magnet wire
  • Nooelec 9:1 balun

Note - Some soldering was required

The way I put this together was to use my fence and the second story of my house with a hook and command strip. First, I chose one end of my fence as the termination point. This is where the fence met the house. The balun is installed half way between the top rail and the bottom rail of the fence. The bottom rail is about 18 inches off the ground and the top rail about 5.5 ft. There is a 100ft cable on each rail. On the top wire, I also attached an addition 100+ ft of magnet wire by soldering it together. This magnet wire runs further along my fence then up to the second story of my house at about 25 ft to provide some height.

Using this antenna, I’m able to DX stations over 10k miles away consistently on a nightly basis. The entire HF spectrum as at my hands. The antenna pairs well with both my Airspy HF+ Discovery and the RTL-SDR + Nooelec HamItUp+ Upconverter.