[Elecraft] Advice on First HF Antenna

[Vic Rosenthal 4X6GP/K2VCO]

This is a very broad question! If I had no limitations, financial or 
regulatory, I would probably get a large Steppir beam on a tower at 
least 70' tall. But that is probably not what you are thinking of.

A simple, cheap antenna is a dipole up as high as possible -- no less 
than 30 feet in the air at the center, preferably higher. You could 
simply make a 'fan dipole' for 40 and 20 meters, fed with coax and a 1:1 
balun at the feedpoint.

An even better antenna is a 40 or 80 meter dipole fed with open wire 
line (see <http://trueladderline.com/>). You can buy this assembled 
quite reasonably. It will work with the KX3 internal tuner plus a 1:1 or 
4:1 balun at the transceiver. If the feedline is at least 33 feet long, 
a 66-foot dipole will work on all bands from 80 through 10 meters 
(probably 6 meters too). Again, the higher the better.

You can buy all kinds of expensive verticals and clever compact 
antennas, but the above will outperform all of them for both DX and 
local work. Some of the expensive ones will be far worse. The only 
better antenna is a directional antenna like a rotary beam.

I'll let someone else answer your question about field antennas.

73,
Vic, 4X6GP/K2VCO
Rehovot, Israel
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco/

On 8 Dec 2015 00:13, CRAIG SCHROEDER wrote:
> I am pretty new ham and a brand new KX3/PX3 owner excited to try my
> hand at DX'ing!  If you were buying your first HF base antenna,
> primarily looking for performance on 20 and 40 meters, what would you
> recommend?  Also, what do you suggest as a high performance field
> antenna for QRP?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Craig KD0TXL