DanielLAlvarez wrote:
its just up there on the side of the house... i have cable and never took down
the antenna... can i just plug the receiver into the wall jack or will i do
serious damage?

It won't do any damage.

It won't be the most effective shortwave antenna in the world but it
might be better than the built-in antenna on your radio. Try it!

-- Try connecting the inner conductor and the outer conductor of the
feedline together, and connecting *both* to the center conductor of the
antenna jack on the receiver. It's likely to pick up a lot more signal
- though it's also likely to pick up a lot more noise. If the signal
increases more than the noise then you're in businessgrin.

-- If you have a "booster" on the TV antenna, you'll need to remove it
before the antenna will do much good on SW. However, if you tie the
inner and outer conductors of the feedline together it might still work
well with the booster in place.

(you should remove the booster anyway. Sometimes unused boosters will
"oscillate", radiating a strong signal that interferes with other
people's TVs)
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com