Most of the antennas on HF, VHF and UHF are home made there is one exception. When I moved qth some years ago I had some cash left over and I decided to buy a tri - band beam for 20, 15 and 10 meters. This was a good buy as it performs well on hf. I use an X7 made by Cushcraft and soon after I purchased an add on kit for 40 meters. This was not a very good idea as it was put together and when I measured the SWR it was not good and like all good engineers I took it down and checked all the measures twice and found them to be correct. I rang my supplier and they contacted Cushcraft this resulted in no help at all. However the radio shop in UK gave a considerable amount of help. They sent via the post an antenna analizer and with this tool I managed to get the SWR correct on 40 meters. It has never performed very well on 40 meters so I use mainly my 40 meter vertical. I am not very keen on horizontal wires or dipoles as I find vertical antennas work better than wires for DX. The wires have to be at least 0.5 l above the ground ( on some hf bands this means you have to put the aerial at a very great height and sometimes this is not very practical ). The wire or dipole at low height is not a very good idea as most radiation is high angle. This is ok for working semi locals but no good for working dx. The vertical must have a good ground system for them to work well I used wire mats and raised radials to give a good ground system.