Homemade Ham Radio Antennas That Work: Books, Clubs, and QRP Ideas

When you’re trying to pull a weak signal out of the noise, or make contact with just a few watts, your antenna stops being a “project” and becomes the whole game. So bad advice costs time and money and causes frustration to boot. That’s why homemade ham radio antennas are worth learning from the people who must make every microvolt count.

This page points you to the sources I consider the most dependable for antenna “home brewing,” with an emphasis on HF wire antennas and what consistently works in real-world installations. You’ll see where QRP operators tend to find surprisingly effective designs, plus the specific books and club publications that deliver homemade antenna ideas that work, often in spite of theory!

If you want fewer dead ends and more proven starting points, begin with the references below.

Homemade antenna parts & tools

Because many ham radio operators, all over the world, like to experiment with homemade antennas, I felt I should share with you here my favorite sources of information for the antenna "home brewing" enthusiast. 

They help you keep abreast of antenna theory and discover some of the more popular homemade HF antennas that have proven their worth in time and effort. 

There are other off the beaten path versions of homemade HF antennas that work, even if they don't always follow the widely accepted characteristics that marketing will lead you to accept as the norm.

Who "Brews" The Best
Homemade Ham Radio Antennas for HF?

I believe that QRP enthusiasts come up with some of the most efficient and effective homemade ham radio antennas.

Why?

Because they have to extract every micro-volt of RF possible from the radio waves to hear other QRP ham radio stations.

Also, when a QRP operator puts out 5 watts of RF or less into an antenna system, s/he wants most of it to get out there and do it's thing!

Every successful QRP operator knows that her/his success is due to two essential elements.

1. Mastering QRP operating techniques.
2. Installing a well designed antenna system.

For more on QRP and its antennas, here is a good reference that I recommend without hesitation.

• Low Power Communication - The Art And Science of QRP. 3rd Edition, by Rich Arland, W3OSS (ARRL Publication), chapters 6-7.

In addition, QRP clubs publish magazines or or newsletters that sometimes contain HF antenna gems that QRP operators experience with successfully.

• RadCom - by RSGB  the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB.org)
• SPRAT - magazine published by G-QRP Club (GQRP.com)
• QRP Quarterly - by QRP Amateur Radio Club International (qrparci.org)

VE2DPE's eBooks & Book
On HF Wire Antennas

I humbly submit the books I self-published based on my own experience with HF wire antennas. They are light on theory and heavy on practical solutions, which I have found to work ... often in spite of commonly accepted theory!

My books demonstrate that no physical environment is as perfect as free space, which is where perfect antennas are conceived. Therefore we have to make do with the tradeoffs that are imposed upon us down here on earth.

When we build wire antennas ourselves, we are in a perfect position to choose the tradeoffs we are willing to live with ... instead of being forced to accept the tradeoffs that a commercially made antenna will impose upon us.

Classic Books On Antennas

There are many good books out there. Here are the ones I refer to the most.

ARRL Books

Solid reference books by the American Radio Relay League:

• The ARRL Antenna Book. 21st Edition ISBN: 0-87259-987-6
• VHF/UHF Antenna Classics. First edition. ISBN: 0-87259-907-8
• Low Profile Amateur Radio, Second Ed. ISBN: 0-87259-974-4
• Low Power Communication, Third Ed. ISBN: 0-87259-104-2

And, of course, the "bible" - ARRL Handbook For Radio Communications - contains all the technical details to help you understand how antennas work - which helps quite a bit in reducing time spent on trial-and-error! :)

Note: if you are a US citizen, I encourage you to buy ARRL publications directly from the ARRL, preferably as a member supporting the ARRL. Outside USA, you will get a better deal by buying from Amazon or some other online discount outlet than from ordering directly from the ARRL.

See this link for more ARRL books on antennas.

RSGB Books

Building Successful HF Antennas By Peter Dodd, G3LDO, RSGB Publication. ISBN 9781-9050-8643-6

See this link for more RSGB books on antennas.

Periodicals

AntenneX used to be the only periodical exclusively dedicated to antennas. It covered all aspects of antennas worth writing about, many of them experimental. This magazine sadly disappeared years ago. :(

Today, the only magazines that still occasionally contain meaningful articles on HF antennas are ARRL publications QST and QEX. You will find them here:
https://www.arrl.org/arrl-magazines 

You May Also Like to Visit These Pages

73 de VE2DPE
Claude Jollet
104-30 avenue des Berges,
Notre-Dame-des-Prairies, Québec, Canada J6E 1M9

QTH Locator: FN36gb