My first Antenna

With the impending completion of my rxtx board I've been thinking about an antenna. I posted on the ham mailing list at work and got some good advice on what band to look at (30m) and what to do about an antenna. With this info I headed on over to the local Radio Ham Outlet and begged for more help. With their advice I got a RadioWavz 20dp11 20m Dipole, 50m RG8X coax, PL-259 connector for the radio, 300ft UV resistant nylon rope and a Dummy Load. It was a lot of small costs that ended up total ing $180. Quite a bit more than I really wanted to spend, but it all looked like good stuff and I was giving my radio it's best opportunity to pick up some signals and hopefully have something to listen to. I plan to enlist the help of my parents while they're here to help me hang this in the redwood trees behind my house.

While soliciting advice at work and at the Ham Outlet I was encouraged to get an antenna analyzer ($300) and the idea of a multi-band dipole seemed interesting, but alas, that would need a tuner too which would be another $150 to $300. All these amounts are way out of my budget right now. I'm still only playing with this stuff.