Any old thing works fine on modern portable SW's, as far as pulling
in signal. You can't get extravagant or most receivers will overload
with the strong signals around and give you horrible images all over
the band. So the modest wind-up antennas are about the best you can
do.
You get differences in rejection of local noise, and for doing that
you need grounding and matching transformers and distant antennas,
or some ability to steer a null on noise sources at least, to get
away from the local sources somewhat.
So I expect the feature here is invisible wire, the better to meet
the local homeowner association objections or the wife's moods, and
beyond that it's a reel antenna that comes with some portables, but
they have black wire you can see and this doesn't.
--
Ron Hardin
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.