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what is
a good HF apartment antenna

I wish I knew that. Do you mean indoor antenna? Is for rx/tx? More details please.

Hmm...this is difficult without knowing your layout of apartment. Do you have a balcony? Something to attach a clamp, is height a problem, are you on the top floor with attic, do you have access to roof and could you use it? What I know will work in any apartment is a loop antenna. I use many different antenna, large verticals, EFHW, dipoles and loops. For indoors and more noisy places a loop can be benificial, but tuning them can be touchy. Also, many not all , loops only allow so many watts into them. Also, if purchasing a loop can be expensive, but of course you can make your own. But the footprint is tiny, they can be used indoors, directional to some degree. When the weather is bad in my area I use my loop from indoors and have made contacts with 5 and 10 watts quite far, up to a couple of thousand miles. I have an Alexloop Hampack, again quite pricey but they do work. My loop has its limitations of 25 watts max ssb, 10w CW and digi, and only 10-40 on HF. Of course people use long wires, gutter antennas ect. All of these outside of a resonant antenna would be a compromise, but you would be surprised how well many of these antenna do when the conditions are great. I hope this helps...

KF6 - Let me add if you have a tuner for your HF radio these small verticals from Elecraft work very well but require a tuner. And again these are low wattage only. They are the AX1, AX2 and their new AX3. AX1 15m, 17M and 20m, AX2 20m, AX3 10,12,15,17,20, and 30meters. All have power limitations but the whip antenna is maybe 3 1/2 feet at its tallest. I use these with a tuner and have made contacts all over the world on porches, camping. But they would have to be used outside on your balcony outside, assuming you have one. Do your research but these are a few options that you can start to look at.

Back in the day I made some quite surprisingly long range contacts with a DIY small magnetic loop antenna made of copper tubing (85 cm in diam.) and an old tube/valve radio's variable air capacitor and using only 5 to 10W TX output power.

The antenna was placed at a height of ~1m above the floor in a balcony on the second floor.

To me the main drawback of this antenna is that every frequency change requires tuning the loop again.

Depending on the application this can turn out to be a very useful feature as it inherently acts a band filter.

If intended for CW you may be happy with it.


Note that at higher TX powers this antenna type requires an appropriate capacitor to avoid arching and care bust be taken not to touch or come near the capacitor during TX due to the high field strength present in this area.

It is a compromise antenna but depending on your conditions it may be a very good one.

My loop antenna is about 1m off the floor as well using a tripod, and I am lucky to have a variable gear controlled tuning knob, which makes tuning very precise. But you are correct you have to re-tune every time you change the frequency on the VFO. But tuning is not difficult, listening for the noise floor to rise to its highest noise level and usually you are 1 to 1. The Alexloop has an aided light indicator as well, when at it's brightest you are tuned. I use my loop in the house when the weather is poor outside and I am always surprised I can get out and can be heard. I have used this with both voice and CW. The 3 most positive things I can say about a loop are , the noise floor is lower vs. a vertical, and 2 every once and a while I prefer to use a loop to engage with the loops tuning knob and radio, and lastly it works, and sometimes suprisingly well with such a small footprint.

Agree, tuning is not difficult and as long as you are close to the antenna (and use low TX power) it can quickly be tuned to a new frequency.