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.
The main challenge now is propagation, which ranges from poor to erratic. Takes patience and persistence to snag any real DX signals from stations using 100 watts or less. Most of the 40m hams I'm hearing this year are local to my state or regional in adjacent states, possibly using NVIS antennas. I don't think I've heard a true DX 40m ham since 2010. From 2007-early 2010, I routinely heard 40m hams from Australia, NZ, Japan, etc.
When conditions are good, especially at morning and evening gray line, I can hear pirates on a small barefoot portable outdoors - no external antenna needed. A few days ago I heard Captain Morgan while I was walking around the block, away from suburban RFI, carrying a small portable with just the telescoping whip. But I couldn't hear him at home because my antenna is too close to surrounding apartment complexes - a fog of white noise RFI tends to swamp weaker signals.
A CB antenna can actually work pretty well. A DXer in France, Marcel, has logged many N. American pirates using a CB antenna. But if I'm recalling correctly he's in fairly quiet residential area and the CB antenna is mounted on his roof.
You might try a tuner with the CB. It'll probably work fairly well down to 10 MHz without a tuner, but below that it might be nearly deaf. I have the opposite problem with a homebrewed indoor magnetic loop. It's fine up to 10 MHz, but deaf above that unless I run it through an amplifier with a tuner - then it's fairly good up to 20m.
If you attach some wire it's probably best to keep it to around 20'-40'. As other folks noted, portables tend to overload with too much wire. When I attach 20'-40' random wire to my Sony ICF-2010, I have to turn the RF gain way down to avoid overload - mostly from WBAP on 820. But I'll also hear other local MW flamethrowers and used to hear WYFR breaking through when the Sony was tuned to the usual 6925-6955 kHz zone.