Which antenna has the best reception

Which antenna has the best reception for DX stations? Right now I am using the antenna that came in the box with my Tecsun PL-880 but I want to be able to hall in more DX.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have.


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Moved to our antennas forum...Thee really isn't anything that would qualify as 'best reception', since it encompasses so much more than just the antenna, however...this is a very difficult question to answer, really. There are so many different designs that it's hard to choose, and it very much depends on several factors, some of which are;

a. Maybe the most important - can you put something outside, away from the home? Doing this will limit the amount of crud you get from all the noise sources in the home

b. Are you interested in a particular region of the world? There are directional antennas - the basic dipole is one example - that can make this happen

c. If you can put something outside, how much room have you got to play with? Any trees or anything that would serve as a support structure?

d. Some folks like to concentrate on one or more frequency ranges. This is possible with different kinds of antennas. Are you looking to cover the entire HF spectrum? MW? LW?

Even where you are, I'd hesitate to put something up that was large, like a big random wire (say 100 foot or so). Nevertheless, you're in prime DX country, especially since us East Coasters often strain to hear Asians, or your local 60m outlets.

Let's have a little more information....Mike

Another factor - do you know how to solder and use simple hand or power tools? Homebrewing antennas is a lost art, even though there are many pre-built (well, mostly) designs like the PAR EF-SWL.

And I would be very remiss if I didn't add this in...(links are always blue in color)

http://forums.radioreference.com/receive-antennas-below-30mhz/295299-great-first-timer-project.html

Mike

Being that digital SW portables generally don't handle long wire antennas very well, the first thing to try on SW is a slightly longer wire than the one that came with the radio. I don't know how long your Tecsun antenna is, but if it's 20 feet (6 meters?) add a meter or two, and see if that helps.

If you keep adding wire after that, there will probably come a point where the radio may 'overload', and you will get some whistles on top of SW stations and SW stations may show up in places where they're not.

On MW, the best thing you can do is get a tunable external loop antenna. They're a loopy looking thing made of plastic that sits next to the radio, and they all have a tuning knob on them. Grundig / Eton makes one, and there are others out there available, new and used. You sit the tunable loop next to the radio and turn the dial on the antenna's knob until the MW signal is boosted.

Also, if the PL-880 is like a lot of the other new SW portables with DSP chips inside, you should be able to pull in tons of stations from Asia just off the whip. I live on the West Coast of the US and hear Asians galore on most mornings on a Grundig G2 - just off its whip.

What you may really need -- instead of a better antenna -- is better SW conditions. Propagation has been more or less mediocre the past year on SW, at least in my location in the NW US.