I'll ask the dumb question. Can I lay out across the ground? Stringing it through a tree or some other high structure would be something I'm not currently capable of.
To compare and contrast with
@Uzi2's constructive post above...
Schematically, this...
...is like that longwire receiving antenna I had in high school
.
Except that I didn't have a "
SUPPORT (Pipe or Mast, etc)" -
I had a ginormous hook eye screwed into the outside window trim
that
used to hold the pulley for the second clothes line,
dating back to when my mother had no electric dryer and a baby in diapers.
The "
INSULATOR at each end" were 1cmx2cm scraps of ¼" plexiglas from metal shop,
with two teentsy holes drilled through the faces.
The "
SUPPORT (Tree, pipe, pole, e" was the 20' iron pipe w/
two ginormous hook eyes
my father had sunk at the property line in 1953 to support (both) clothes lines.
The house pulley hooks were high enough that no one was clotheslined
by the clothes lines when they walked along the house. So neither did the antenna
decapitate anyone.
Ham operators, er,
pine for trees to string their wire antennas.
But in some sense they don't
exactly string 'em through the trees.
The ropework looks like this:
But the pulley isn't attached to an eye hook screwed into a tree.
The pulley is tied to a piece of parachute cord that's flung over a branch.
You downhaul on the paracord until the pulley contraption is up in the air,
then tie the paracord around the tree trunk. Bonus points if you tie the
paracord to the tree high enough that a kid can't reach to untie it - but
that just takes adult stature and a stepstool - not renting a cherry picker.
All this is an installation good enough to be permanent - better than seasonal,
let alone a week or two of tuning around before you lose interest.
So you can cut all kinds of corners if you don't want to invest the time
just to check out the shortwave bands.
Let's assume you've got the rheumatiz or you fell off the ladder
the last time you tried to clean the gutters, and you're not looking
to build a model of the Brooklyn Bridge on your lawn.
If you once toss one fishing sinker with paracord over one adequate tree branch,
all the rest of the excitement takes place down on solid earth.
If you have a salt water rod longer than the height of the branch,
you can just droop a sinker over the branch without even casting.
Hope this helps.