My goodness! Thank you all for the incredible wealth of insight and
advice! While I can't say that my problems are yet solved, I can
report the results from my latest tests. Though I'm starting with
relatively little technical knowledge I suspect that I am nevertheless
hooked - if venturing out in -2 degree (F) weather in the middle of the
night to test my radio counts as being hooked.

The first thing I did was to take Bob's advice and double check all the
switches. It's always something simple, right? Well, the SSB switch
was set to off, so I set that to on right away. Everything else is as
it should be.

As it *is* the middle of the night, procuring wire for antenna is an
impossibility so I did what I could in the meantime. On the
recommendation of Junius and others I grabbed some batteries, popped
them in the Yacht Boy and ventured out onto one of the piers here on
the lake. Not much around save water, though there are some power
lines not far in the distance. It was bitter cold, so I didn't bother
trying to rig up the reel antenna to anything and relied only on the
whip.

I tried all of the frequencies recommended by mcdonald606a - 5975,
7415, 6616, 12095 & 1170. This was all just after the start of the
0600 UTC hour. My research tells me that I should have heard the
following:

WBCQ (from Maine, USA) on 7415
BBC World Service on 12095
Nothing on 5975 (gap in schedule)

but I couldn't turn up anything at any time for any day on 6166.

And what did I hear? Nothing, save for some weak voices on 1170. Now
by my understanding, 1170 would technically be an AM or MW frequency,
correct? And mcdonald606a says that it's WWVA from West Virginia. I
also turned up, in my reading, a listing for Radio Farda on the same
frequency. Is this correct? I have to say though, the voice seemed to
indicate much more of the scheduled "Truckin' Bozo" from WWVA than
anything that could possibly have been on Radio Farda. Am I in fact
correct in understanding that they are the same frequency though? The
bad news is that the reception was still not terribly intelligible.
Lots of noise. Distorted voices.

I then packed up, hopped in the car and drove out of town to a fairly
remote location where I found a wonderful field to stop at. Again,
much of the same. The good news is that since I changed the SSB switch
to "on", I can pick up a lot more, but only enough to make out that it
is supposed to be a broadcast of some sort, never anything that could
actually be listened to and understood. While in the field I cruised
around the 49 and 41 meter bands per Brian's recommendation. No luck.
Just more of the "ooh, ooh, what was that" experience. Nothing ever
actually comes in.

I'm going to continue pushing forward and will be visiting the
electronics store tomorrow to look into antennas. After all the
recommendations - and especially the encouraging words of GYT - I'm
hoping that a decent antenna will help to solve the problems.

Feel free to weigh in again after reading this update, and I'll be sure
to post the results of the next step in testing.

BTW - Regarding the question about that X pattern... My huge window
faces west - much like Peter Maus' - and the X crosses it, which would
make it run north/south (or more of a slightly NE/SW in my case). I
also have a lot of electronics in the house - something that Peter also
mentioned - so I did take the liberty of turning them all off, but who
knows what others in the building are running. It's a small building
and I can pick up at least 4 wireless networks so I'm guessing that the
neighbors are pretty tech-laden as well. But the outdoor tests should
have shed some light on all this...