the longwire

“So,” you might ask, “what’s all this about a longwire?”

I named my web after it because the longwire, or random wire, is the antenna of choice for shortwave listening… which I did for 30 years or so. It is possibly the easiest antenna of all, and costs nearly nothing. However, despite what others may say, you can’t really transmit on it. You will find that it starts to work a lot better on transmit if you add a counterpoise – but then, it isn’t a longwire any more, it’s basically a bent dipole.

Of course, for the last ten years or so I have ended up using my Wellbrook Loop more than the longwire. It beats it about 60% of the time, mainly above 7 MHz, but for AM Broadcast/Medium Wave, the loop always wins.