A coworker of mine talks about how interesting HF is. He's moving and has
been nice enough to give me one of his old HF receiver antennas. It's a
Dressler (not sure the exact model) but he said it's good for receiving
skywave and other HF signals.

Christopher-

I don't think your experience with the Uniden Bearcat compares with listening
to HF. The Bearcat is normally used to listen to VHF and UHF public service
stations such as fire and police, on radio channels that are silent between
transmissions. When the channel goes silent, the radio's squelch closes and it
scans to other channels to look for activity.

HF is a noisy band. There are not only Ham Radio conversations, there are
foreign broadcast stations, Military communications, long-distance aircraft
communications, et cetera. The squelch would stay open most of the time if you
tried to scan HF.

I suspect there is at least one news group like this one, but dedicated to
Shortwave Listening (SWL). If you search it out, you can get an idea what
interests other people.

Good radios for SWL use are much like Ham receivers, and generally cost as much
as a deluxe VHF/UHF scanner. Examples might be a Kenwood R-5000, Drake R-8B,
Yaesu FRG-100B, Icom R-75, et cetera. (One source for new SWL radios might be
Amateur Electronic Supply, http://www.aesham.com/.)

Less expensive radios are available, but look for a used one in your price
range. Popular examples might be the Sangean ATS-803A or the Radio Shack
Realistic DX-440. These have long been discontinued, but show up often on
E-Bay.

73, Fred, K4DII