First Antenna

My first attempt at an antenna. Two lengths of 5m, making a dipole for 20 metres. It is oriented almost exactly with the wires running N-S. 

My plan had been to hoist this up between end supports, one end at a TV antenna on the downhill side, and the other end up the hill somewhat above the house, using some nylon string. Unfortunately I discovered that the tensions got a bit high given the angles and distances, so I settled for starting with it lying on the roof, with one end raised a little.

Originally I had 50 ohm coax wired to the centre leading straight to the receiver.

This actually worked pretty well. Lots of stations in the US and Canada coming in strongly from the west and South Africa from the SE. Not only on 20m, but 40 and 80 working quite well too.

There was quite a lot of QRM from the house of course. The computer in the shack wiped out 80m and 40m mostly. I reduced that a lot by removing the Cat 5 ethernet cable and replacing it with a USB Wi-fi dongle (about 8 GBP from ebay).