"Lenny" wrote in message ...
I've had my R75 for about 2 years now.
I purchased an Antenna Supermarket dipole, the one with the sealed traps,
for the radio.
Then I went and had the Kiwa mods done.
All in all, a very nice setup. And like everyone says, it's great at
Utility listening.
But lately, I've been wanting to dig out more of those tough foreign country
broadcast signals.
Last night was absolutely horrible for listening to foreign stations. Only
received a
few of the strongest ones that were beamed at N. America. So I figured I'd
try something
different. I took a piece of speaker wire, about 25' long, twisted the 2
wires together at each end, stuck
one end into the R75 longwire input, and threw the rest out of my basement
window (yes my radio is in the
basement). So, I took the remaining 15 feet of wire and looped it into a
bush along the side of my house.
It must be all of 5' off the ground.
Back inside I go, not expecting much from the wire. I tuned to a station I
knew I could receive and voila!
It came in nicely. I switched back and forth from the wire to the dipole
and no difference. Hmmmm, strange!
I tuned in a few other stations that were weaker and again, no difference.
Amazing!
Did I waste my money on the Dipole antenna? I can't imagine what 200' of
wire strung up 25' high in my trees
will sound like.
Now I'm wondering if the Dipole has any advantages over the long wire.
Could some kind soul please explain what is happening?
Any recommendations?
Is there a "SW Antennas for Dummies" site somewhere?
Thank you,
Lenny

Several years ago I lived in Sacramento and put up the Sloper antenna
- it was mounted on my tv antenna mast about 10-feet above roof level
and ended on top of my 6-foot fence. I had is installed on my Grundig
650. It was professionally installed by an antenna dealer. On some
frequencies, it did better than the internal whip antenna, and on
other frequencies the internal whip did better. And on some
frequencies the signal was the same. At no frequency did the Sloper
antenna give a BIG difference in signal level compared to the internal
whip, but on the tropical bands, it made enough of a difference to
hear a couple stations that were hard to hear using the whip. But
even then, on a slight difference.