10m antenna

10m seems to be going out of fashion as we approach sunspot minimum. A few years ago, 10m was the band of choice for many to work worldwide DX. Now it is much harder.

For at least a quarter of any year Es brings 10m to life and DX across Europe or the USA is relatively easy.  On FT8 I am finding some amazing worldwide DX on 10m still. 10m is also a decent band for local QSOs often with far less noise than bands like 160, 80 or 40m. A horizontal antenna is generally less noisy than a vertical.

I know this has been on this blog before, but if you want a decent, simple, horizontal polarised antenna for 10m, you could do worse than make my Homebase-10 design. This was in PW and is on my main website. Buying all parts new, it will be hard to spend more than £10. It works well and is small as the picture shows.

The same design will scale for other bands like 6m or 4m.