Thanks to everyone that offered up suggestions on the receivers. After three nights of DXing from the perch with the Icom, Kenwood and Sony I was very surprised by what I found. This was no scientific study but done just by ear. I tested all three units on a 71' random wire out of 20 gauge speaker wire, no ground, running from approx 30' off the ground at the end to 14' off the ground at the units. Test was conducted outside on the deck using a regular 120 wall outlet, no extension cords, surge protectors, power strips etc. The Kenwood and Icom were powered by their original power supplies and the Sony on batteries. All lights were off, no microwave, TV etc inside or out, so no interference. The random wire was plugged in to the clip terminals of the Kenwood and Icom but attached to the whip of the Sony with an alligator clip. The test station was Red Mercury Labs on 09-01-2013 beginning at approx 03:00 UTC over 6935 USB. I stumbled on Led Zep as broadcast via Red Mercury on the Kenwood 1000. The signal was faint but I could definitely ID the tune. Happy as hell with the Kenwood but thinking the Icom would make me want to plug into my tower speakers I ran inside, grabbed the Icom and plugged in. After trying every possible configuration of filters, preamps etc I was really shocked that the Icom wasn't nearly as adept as filtering out the background noise as the Kenwood. Hardly able to believe it I switched back and forth several times. Same result. Shaking my head I grabbed a clip and hooked up to the Sony whip and after adjusting the RF was further blown away to find the Sony even clearer. After this test and several others on USB over the weekend I could got similar results. All the options on the Icom are very cool and it does things neither of the other two can. Unfortunately at the present one of those things is not filter out the muck on USB.....