home made ferrite antennas

[opadavis2]

We are advised not to make our own ferrite antennas. How hard can it be? I ordered two of 20 cm manganese zinc ferrite rods from China at
$7 each. I gather that we should wind the core with one diameter spacing along the whole length for minimum inductance and maximum Q. The only missing information is wire gauge. Anyone have advise?

Peter from High River, Alberta, Canada

Reading the mail, 26 s.w.g. seems to be about average, but it does not seem to be too critical, as lightning is such a powerful signal and the amps have gain to spare.
In fact if we were to forget DXing and think more of the network and distribution, the antennas could be smaller, Quality not Quantity.
Maybe in a perfect system?
my 2 cents.

rb.

Thanks, I will wind with 26 gauge ( or what I have that is close). I agree that with more stations coming on-line, there is less need to get signals from far off. It may even make it harder to process all the data available. But then we would not impress people as much by only sensing signals from a few hundred kilometres away.