so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and been using a mag mount on the car and a little rubber duck on my handheld but i want to actually get on HF properly. i dont have a lot of money and honestly i kind of enjoy building stuff so i figured a wire dipole was the obvious starting point. i've been reading the ARRL antenna book (borrowed it from a guy at the club) and i get the basic math, 468 divided by frequency in MHz gives you total length in feet, cut each leg half that. seems simple enough.

but here's where i get confused — every source i read says something slightly different about the feedpoint. some say i need a 1:1 balun, some say just feed it directly with coax and not worry about it, some say i need a current balun specifically not a voltage balun. for a basic 40m dipole in my backyard at maybe 25-30 feet up, does it actually matter in practice? like will i notice a real difference or is this one of those things that only matters in a contest station setup

also the wire question — i have some leftover 14 gauge solid copper from some house wiring. is that going to be mechanically annoying to work with for an antenna? i've heard stranded is better for outdoor stuff because it flexes more but i have like 80 feet of this 14 gauge just sitting there

the balun debate will go on forever honestly, for a simple backyard 40m dipole i wouldn't lose sleep over it. if your feedline is running perpendicular to the antenna for a decent length you might not even notice any common mode issues in practice. that said a simple 1:1 current balun made from a few turns of coax through a mix 31 toroid isn't hard or expensive to make and just removes the variable. i made mine in about 20 minutes and i stop wondering about it.

the solid 14 gauge copper will work fine electrically, it's actually got lower resistance than a lot of the thinner stuff people use. the issue is exactly what you said, it's stiff and doesn't hang as nice, and if the wind gets it moving around a lot over months or years it can work harden and eventually crack at stress points like where you attach to an insulator. for a temporary setup or if you're going to support it well it's completely fine. if you want it to last a few years with no fuss, some #14 or #16 stranded THHN from the hardware store is cheap and works great.

yeah just use the wire you have, get it in the air and see what happens. you can always tweak it later. my first dipole was made from whatever i had laying around and it worked. just make sure your center insulator can actually handle the tension if you're pulling it between two points, that's where i screwed up my first one — the plastic cracked in the cold and the whole thing dropped in january lol