Thanks for the encouragement, but my point is that many new hams wait too long to get on the HF band space because they think they need a very expensive or complicated antenna. Certainly you get better performance with better equipment, but there are a lot of cheap solutions that work great.
If you want to maximize your time, invest around $250 in a basic antenna analyzer like the MFJ-259C. I hear complaints they aren't accurate, but they work great for quickly getting a wire up and tuned. An analyzer puts a very very weak signal on your antenna and then you can tune the output frequency of your analyzer to find the SWR dip on the band you want to operate on. If the dip happens at too low a frequency, trim a bit off the ends and re-test If it happens at too high a frequency, twist a few more inches of wire on each end. If you are using just an SWR meter, or your radio transmitter, you don't know exactly where the dip is unless you are willing to go back and forth to the transmitter and key it, check SWR, then go trim a bit more.
Because I rarely have my antennas at anything like a reasonable height, I tend to have to cut them much shorter than the references suggest.
I wish I had a 40 foot tower with a 20 meter beam and 40 Meter wire like my Dad had, but I simply don't have the room or the money at the moment.
