We were both amazed!  You can't imagine how low the noise levels were in the
middle of nowhere.
The revolution of the availability of ballenced feed lines, and outdoor
automatic tuners, has improved the effectivenes of the most cost and radio
efficient system we have.  That is the tuned half wave dipole.
With the tuning, multi band double extended zepps can be made to work well
anywhere.
The new insulated antenna wire is very easy to work with.
Maybe its not new, but it is new to me!!
Probably less than $20 to build a working HF antenna.