In article ,
SC Dxing wrote:
After a week of owning the Grundig G6, so far the best antenna
arrangement for me is simply running a speaker wire along the ground
about 70 feet in my backyard. The Slinky antenna didn't work out well,
running a wire on the top of my house gave me more inference (plus
overloading), and the whip antenna isn't good on weaker signals. I've
heard that a CB antenna does well on the higher freqs on SW (15mhz and
above), if I can get one cheap, I'll try to hook that up on my roof.

My question is, what do you use for an antenna to listen to shortwave?

It depends on what sort of antenna the radio is designed for.

My Grundig FR-200 (the $40-$50 crank powered) shortwave is designed for
high impedance with the short whip. You can tell if the signal gets
weaker if you touch the antenna. No external antenna input.

You can really boost performance (when running on batteries) with a
couple of 10-15 feet lengths of wire with alligator clips. Clip one
onto the antenna, and clip the other onto the radio's circuit ground.
That's the negative side of the battery string, or the outside of the
headphone jack, or the negative side of the dc-power jack. Run them in
a straight line with the radio in the middle, broadside to the direction
to the station. (Not for the AM band, that uses the internal loopstick,
for most portables).

Buzzword: counterpoise.

Using headphones may have a similar effect, as the headphone cable and
your bod take the place of the wire. Likewise, running on the AC adapter,
but that may add more noise.

Mark Zenier
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)