20 Meters Around the World — From My Backyard

Sometimes you don’t need a complicated antenna farm or a kilowatt of power to enjoy what HF radio has to offer.

Pictured here is my 20-meter end-fed half-wave vertical, supported with guy lines and using three ground radials laid out across the yard. A feed line runs back to my HF station on the back porch, and this relatively simple setup has proven to be a surprisingly capable antenna.

With 100 watts, I’ve used it to talk with stations locally, keep in touch with friends back up north, and make contacts around the world. When 20 meters opens up, it’s remarkable how far a modest station can reach.

The antenna has also been a lot of fun for digital modes, including one of my favorites: slow-scan television (SSTV). There’s something uniquely satisfying about watching an image slowly appear on the laptop knowing that it traveled hundreds—or even thousands—of miles over the air rather than through the Internet.

One particularly memorable experience happened on Thanksgiving two years ago. 14.233 MHz was alive with SSTV activity, and it seemed almost like an impromptu worldwide Thanksgiving image party. I spent part of the day receiving images from other operators and transmitting some of my own. All I needed was my HF radio, the laptop connected to it, and this antenna standing in the backyard.

That’s part of what continues to make amateur radio fascinating to me. A piece of wire, some aluminum, a radio, a computer, and 100 watts can become a communications system capable of reaching across continents.

You never quite know who—or what—you’re going to hear when 20 meters opens up. And that’s half the fun.