Old barbed wire fence as longwire antenna?

[josh.oui]

After years of failing to visit because... well... life happened, I finally got around to cleaning my land. There's a long stretch of old barbed wire fencing running along the back end of around 200 feet total. It's rusty but still strong, at least that's how I see it. I don't use it anymore so I began thinking maybe I could transform it as a longwire receive antenna for shortwave or AM. Would that work, or would the rust and barbs kill the signal?

 

[Altinababy]

The rust doesn't matter in my opinion because your not running high current, just as a receive antenna, what matters is the metal still conducts, your 200 ft elevated wire is even a plus for you can tie a lead to it, run it through a balun if you're, or just straight into a high impedance input and see what you catch

 

[AirwaveScout]

I really love this idea! And I agree, as long as it still conducts, that old barbed wire is totally usable. Plus, the length is a great advantage. Have you managed to set it up yet? I'd be really interested to hear what kind of signals you're picking up

 

[Old Ham]

I disagree about the rust. Years ago I had a TV translator that I took care of. I was located on the same mountain top as a ski run. The ski patrol guys reported that our translator was interfering with their emergency channel. I went up and turned off the translator and sure enough the interference went away. I went through the translator with a spectrum analyzer and it was absolutely clean. I took the analyzer out to the antenna and checked the signal coming out of the feed line to the antenna. Again, it was clean. The moment I connected the antenna to the feed line the interference returned. I finally hauled a new antenna up the mountain on the ski lift, it was January, and installed it in place of the old antenna. No interference. On closer examination, once the old antenna was in the shop, I could see that the connection of the feedline to the antenna was corroded causing a non linear joint and tons of interference. This at 10 Watts. I wouldn't discount rusted barb wire as a problem or trust it for use as an antenna.