Basic antenna for shortwave - will it work?

[CapnRefsmmat]

I've been having more and more success finding interesting things to listen to on shortwave (BBC World Service rocks!) and so I'm planning on putting an antenna up in my attic. I have a Grundig portable shortwave radio (no coax jack, so I'm going to just clip the antenna to the existing one), so I'm also worried about overloading it.

Here's what I'm planning:
I'll run a wire up to the attic (probably coax). From the end of this will sprout two (maybe three, if the radio will handle it; I'll see how well two works) wires, angled perpendicular to each other and running along the floor. They'll probably be about 20 feet long each.

It would also be possible to run a loop around the attic as well. Unfortunately, I'm limited in space I can run wire through (to about 20 feet in each direction) but I'm currently limited to a 15ft wire antenna that came with the radio, so I'll take any decent improvement I can get.

 

[SCPD]

That should work just fine. Remember that you can use insulated wire for SWL listening. MFJ sells a antenna tuner for SWL that you can ground for protection.

 

[CapnRefsmmat]

One other question (though I can just test it out myself): Would the fan motors in the furnace (which is in the attic) cause any interference with the radio?


(I'll probably just walk up there with the radio and turn on the furnace to see, anyways.)

 

[CapnRefsmmat]

Oh, and another thing:
Is there anything else I'd have to do to the antenna? Grounding, tuners, etc... I really don't know how applicable any of them are to my situation.