- Be prepared to fiddle to see what works for you.
- Don't believe the experts all the time. If you want the very best performance towers, beams and high power could help, but for much of the time compromises will do just fine.
- If wider bandwidths like SSB don't work for you because of local manmade noise use narrower bandwidth modes like FT8.
- On HF bands and 6m (probably 2m too) loft-space antennas and a few radials can work well. Get as much vertical wire up (a quarter wave electrically) as you can and coil this up to make a helical quarter wave if need be. Cut the length to get lowest SWR. Here I am thinking of loft antennas, but the same advice applies outside too.
- On 6m and 2m FT8 aircraft scatter, polarisation does not seem to matter.
- On 10m and 6m sporadic-E (Es) a few watts of SSB to almost any antenna (even a wire dipole indoors) will allow you to have European contacts. Es is best May, June and July in the UK.
- On HF, I have rarely found polarisation matters.
- Go portable if all else fails.
On 160m SSB my noise level is S9, but with FT8 I have no issues at all on RX or TX.
My overall message is just have fun! Find out what is best for you by playing around. Amateur radio means different things to different people - just enjoy what gives you pleasure.
