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I have always liked to tinker making antennas. Many of you have heard of my attic array I had at the last residence. I burned up the web looking for ideas. I have a Hamstik dipole on the roof for 6m that works great. It's above my 2m/440 yagi on a tripod connected to a rotor. I have a homemade OCD strung across the upper hill connected to a homemade ugly balun. I just got off the roof from setting up a 20ft section of tower I got from an antenna man today. Trying to think of what else I can make wire wise to string from it under my groundplane antenna. I think what started me down the road of homebrew was the desire to get on the air not having much money for antennas. My first 2 base antennas were homebrew. I even made contact to Italy on a coax dipole. I guess the "need" to get on the air made the construction fun. Plus the added benefit of success from something you did yourself. When I first started I didn't have a clue that you could do it yourself which may be where some new guys are at. But I found the web full of info for a guy to go hog wild building antennas.

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http://www.haminfobar.co.uk

With wire antennas, I think it's mostly laziness or just not knowing. I get a kick out of just how much money people do charge for them.

With yagis, a lot of it is not knowing how, but in my case, i've looked around at what I have for metal supplier options and by the time i add up all the metal, it's very very close to what a manufactured antenna would cost me...particularly with the time of assembly. Testing a beam is not so easy so after laying out money and time, you can wind up with an expensive pile of metal that doesn't work well.

I am frequently surprised at how many local hams don't even know how to do basic soldering or understand even basic polarity for making their own power cables. i've had to help a few guys with basic audio cables and power runs...I was surprised.

I hear ya on that one. Pretty sad isn't it. When I was 14 I was making my own cables,both audio and coaxial, and never had anything that could be remotely called training. I just read a lot and went ahead and did it. By the time I could legally drive a car I had built a couple small tube type amps using 6KD6 sweep tubes and had the yard covered in antenna wires. Having 7.5 acres to play with helped with that. It wasn't until I had finished high school that I took any training in the electronics field. I really don't know what is differant today with folks other than motivation,or the lack thereof.

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Front/back ratio comes from the antenna. Forward gain comes from the wall socket.