"Crazy George" wrote in message ...
Dave:
I quickly scanned the responses to this point, and no one gave you the
correct guidance. In this present day environment, if you are interested in
BCB DXing, forget electric field (wire) antennas. Too much noise.

I agree, but not really because of the noise. Because of the non
directional performance of most fairly short random wires for MW use.

Unless
you live in the middle of the desert, and are willing to forgo modern
conveniences, all an outside wire at BCB will give you is more noise. Start
looking into shielded loops. Lots of information on the 'net about them.
Up to about 3 MHz, they will outperform wire antennas hands down anywhere
except "clean" government receive sites. And, even there, shielded loops
are the antenna of choice for BCB intercept, and lower frequencies. See,
for example "Hermes Loops" on TCI's web page. I forget who else makes them,
but the government buys lots of them.

Now, if you are interested in Short Wave reception, that's another matter.
But pitfalls lurk there also.

Any kind of loop would be better than the wire. Doesn't really have to
be shielded, although that might reduce local noise a bit. I've tried
both, and could tell little difference. I use a 12 turn-16 inch loop
for MW, and local noise is very little problem at all. I have wire
antennas of various lengths and none are as good as the loop for MW.
The wires are too short to be directional on MW, and you get 4
stations on each freq. With the loop, you can null out noise or
unwanted stations. Adding a random wire is fairly useless for most
decent MW radios with a ferrite antenna inside. The s/n ratio will
rarely increase unless the ferrite antenna is really micky mouse. In
some case, the s/n ratio may decrease being the ferrite antenna is
directional and the random wire is not. MK