On Mar 11, 11:45 am, Ceriel Nosforit wrote:
Hi,

I just noticed that when I disconnect the ground from my 180
meters long beverage antenna signal levels drop a whole lot, but crosstalk
from a local broadcaster that would cover all of the MW band and a lot
both above and below almost completely disappears. I don't remember
reading about anything like this anywhere. What's going on?

The ground is just a iron rod that I drove half a meter into wet ground
about where I connect the antenna to the coaxial. I connect it directly to
the shield of the BNC connector about a meter above ground. Not elegant,
but that shouldn't cause crosstalk, should it?

My receiver is an Icom-R5 handheld scanner, 0.150 to 1300MHz continuous.

You are probably getting intermod from the local station. Obviously
removing the ground made the antenna perform poorer for the desire as
well as the undesired frequencies. My guess is that there was a
considerable change in impedance of the antenna. Assuminng the radio
was a reasonable match for the antenna with the ground stake connected
the radio may well look like a short tot the antenna now.