Where should you actually put a field antenna?

Not on the ridge. That's the counterintuitive part, because the ridge is where the radio works best — clean path in every direction, nothing in the way. Doctrine is blunt about the cost: an antenna on the ridge line gives enemy observation and fire an aiming stake.

The fix is the military crest. Move down the forward slope until the skyline sits behind you instead of around you. You keep most of your path to the distant station and lose the silhouette that marks it.

Better still, put the hill between you and the threat. Terrain blocks radiation, not just observation. On the reverse slope the mass soaks up everything heading toward hostile direction-finding while your own signal still gets out — which works particularly well with NVIS, where the useful path goes up rather than sideways.

Why it matters: a located transmitter isn't just a jamming target. A fix lets a threat jam your receivers, listen to your traffic, learn your transmission times and battle rhythm, or simply target the grid square.

But don't overcorrect. Doctrine is equally blunt the other way — a thoroughly concealed site that prevents communications is worthless. Bury yourself in a deep ravine and nobody finds you, because nobody hears you either.

Terrain isn't the only variable. Damp ground reaches further than dry, rocky ground, and fresh water nearby helps. Keep clear of power lines, steel bridges, tunnels and busy roads — they absorb RF energy and inject electrical noise. Under trees, a horizontal wire outperforms a vertical whip.

Antenna siting sits where radio propagation, terrain analysis and emission control meet. It's a targeting decision as much as a technical one.

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Send it to someone who always sets up on the highest point they can find.
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A handful of simple ways to mitigate the risk of being located or caught by an enemy while using a radio.
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How do you make a wire antenna directional?

A plain long wire talks in two directions at once — forward to whoever you're working, and backward to everyone behind you. You can't rotate it and you can't switch off the back lobe. But you can absorb it.

Here's why it happens. Power runs up the wire, reaches the open far end, and has nowhere to go, so it reflects and travels back — radiating the whole way. That returning wave is the rear lobe.

The fix is a resistor. Connect the far end to ground through a 500 to 600 ohm non-inductive resistor. The forward wave still radiates all the way down the wire; whatever is left at the end gets absorbed instead of reflected. Nothing travels back, so nothing radiates rearward.

The trade is better than it sounds. On a five-wavelength wire at 14 MHz, terminating cuts rearward radiation by roughly 15 dB and costs about 2 dB forward. Shorter wires pay more — a two-wavelength V-beam gives up around 3.5 dB. And the power heating that resistor is power that would have gone backward anyway.

Component choice matters more than people expect. Wirewound resistors are useless here — the winding behaves as a coil at RF. Carbon types are electrically fine but handle only a few watts, so QRP only. Whatever you use needs a rating of half your transmitter output, short leads, and a weatherproof box at the far end. A useful trick: three resistors in series instead of one reduces stray capacitance.

Build notes: one wire, two wavelengths or longer, 3 to 7 metres up, as straight as the ground allows. Good ground at both ends. Below 12 MHz, point the terminated end straight at the distant station.

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Should your antenna be vertical or horizontal?

It matters more than most people assume. A radio wave carries an electric field lying in the same plane as the wire that launched it — stand the antenna up and the field stands up too. That orientation travels with the signal, and the receiving antenna only extracts energy lying in its own plane.

Cross the two on a direct path and you can lose up to 20 dB. Same power, same distance, clear path, and most of it never arrives. One exception is worth knowing: skywave comes back from the ionosphere elliptically polarised, so on HF long-haul and NVIS the orientation barely counts. This is a direct-path rule — VHF, UHF and ground wave.

So which one? Height decides. Below about three metres — a whip on a pack or a vehicle — vertical gives the stronger signal, clearly so up to 50 MHz. Get both antennas to ten or twenty metres and horizontal wins instead. Most portable stations never leave the first case.

Vegetation flips it. Trunks and stems act like a screen made of vertical wires, and wet foliage makes that screen conductive — it absorbs vertically polarised signals on contact. Under canopy, lay the wire flat. And keep it clear of leaves entirely, because wet foliage touching the wire grounds the signal out.

One more difference nobody mentions. A vertical whip radiates the same in every direction, which is convenient when you're moving and means everyone within range hears you equally. A horizontal half-wave is bidirectional — it has two ends that radiate almost nothing. That's not a flaw. It's a choice about who gets to hear you.

Save this for your comms binder.
Send it to someone running a vertical under heavy trees.
Full comms course on the profile.

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