Longer wire probably would help. I am using two twisted pairs, twisted
together (old phone wire, to be more exact.) This, I believe, gives a
better signal than just a single wire, but it is not that significant.
Length is far more productive in my experience. One question: does your
wire run by an air-conditioner or anything like that? Such a device would
definetly cause noise on your antenna. I run the wire into a piece of 50
ohm coax to get it by my air conditioner, and ground that first where it
comes off the roof and down to the ground and again where it goes up and
into my window. Totally quiet, when overall background noise drops out
enough to notice. I also inductively couple this to my whip antenna, to
gain the extra boost from the preamp attached to the whip. (Have a plug
that fits the external antenna jack, and clip this to some wire wrapped
several times around the whip.)

If any of this helps, let me know and I will see if I can come up with
anything else...

Regards,

Dave

"Mike Chambers" wrote in message
news:2006122911392716807-mikechambers@gmailcom...
I have got about 40 feet of wire in my backyard (running up a very steep
hill). I have the same issue as you, where if I dont connect the wire, then
the signal is too low to really pick up.

Would it help if I had a longer wire?

mike

On 2006-12-29 11:25:55 -0800, "Dave" said:



I've managed to pull them in on 9335 a couple times (at 1300 UTC) but it
always fades out on me as the sun continues to climb. And I'm in Houston
with a 7600GR and about 110' of longwire on the roof. What is your
setup? When I was using just the whip antenna the S/N ratio was so low
that I couldn't make out anything other than the announcement that I was
listening to Voice of Korea. Nothing else recognizable, but it was all
just background noise.

Dave