Does anyone know any kind of SW antenna that will work for my SW radio. I have a Grundig S350DL (No SSB) I have been trying to receive Pirate broadcasts here in North America but still no luck. I hooked up a CB antenna (The Antron 99) but I am not sure if a CB antenna will work for the SW bands. Can anyone recommend any SW antenna's i can buy or build to improve reception so I can receive these Pirate broadcasts.
Several things. First, unless you live in a rural area, your biggest issue will almost certainly be noise. And it may well be noise even if you do live in a rural area. So many modern electronic devices (computers, light dimmers, plasma TV's, etc.) spew vast amounts of RF into the shortwave spectrum. Second, most shortwave portables are designed to work with a short whip antenna. In other words, they amplify the signal coming in from the antenna -- a lot. So the expected result of simply connecting a longer antenna to a radio like the 305DL is that you'll just swamp the thing with lots of RF crud, and still end up hearing little but noise.
What you should first do is to go out into your back yard (or if you live in an apartment with a balcony, out onto the balcony) and try to get as far away from buildings and wires as you can. Then see how much better your reception gets when you operate the set on battery power. Note that you should probably put your hand on the back of the set to provide some sort of counterpoise for the antenna to capacitively couple with.
If you still hear nothing but the harsh buzz of RF crud, then unfortunately shortwave is probably going to mostly be a lost cause at your home. Outside antennas can help in certain situations, but they cannot work miracles. If there's more noise than signal flying through space in the vicinity of an antenna, even the most expensive antenna and radio combination isn't going to receive much (if anything).
If, on the other hand, things get better in the yard, then there is hope. Portable sets can be very useful for pinpointing the sources of RF interference. If you have control over these, then you can simply kill the power to them when you're interested in listening to shortwave. Or maybe you can find a spot in your house where the built-in antenna on the radio works OK. Or you can try John Doty's design of a random-wire antenna with a noise-shielded feed:
http://www.iw5edi.com/ham-radio/?low-noise-antenna-connection,45But the first thing is to determine if it's even worth trying harder at all at your location. About 80% of the urban locations I've lived in have basically been lost causes. I've taken to doing most of my shortwave listening when camping in remote areas (something which I can recommend to anyone: it's amazing what you can hear once you get into a truly quiet location, RF wise).
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