[Texasrocker]

Hello again Brian. The shortwave bands will most definately need more than 1' of antenna wire to work properly. I have found about 25'-30' of outdoor antenna wire seems to balance well on all my old sets, incl all different brands of TRF type sets of the late 20s- late 30s that have no factory balanced ant system, both on AM & Shortwave bands. I also have a much longer outdoor longwire ant (such as your longest one also), that I use for my LPAM transmitter only. What is happening, is your 1' isnt long enough for SW, even though it make work well on AM from your local powerful AM stations signals. By trying to use your 100' or more outdoor antenna, you are most definately overloading to much antenna to the receiver for either AM or Shortwave Bands! Way to much! Extra long outdoor LW antennas build-up capacitance on their own. A way to "balance" the extra long outdoor antenna wire can be done by adding a adjustable "antenna-trimmer" in series to your radios! If you have a old parts chassis laying around with a good variable tuning condenser you can rob, (either 2 gang or 3),.. you could mount it to a piece of flat wood and attach your extra-long outdoor ant wire to the frame of it. Then, off the opposite side of the tuner, attach a jumper wire from one of the oscillator screws and attach it to your radios ant terminals. That way, by turning the tuning-shaft on your variable cap mounted to the board, you can "match-up" & "peak" your extra-long antenna to balance perfectly to any set, and works great on AM for *DX-ing* those long distant stations as well!! Just make sure the frame of the "added" inline (series) variable tuning cap doesnt contact the radio chassis. Ala,... by adding the 2nd tuning condenser, you would have a way to "tune" your extra long outdoor antenna for best reception & balance on *any* vintage radio set!! I still think you also have a microphonic-tube (s) somewhere also, intermittant? Just tryin to help!! Good luck!! Randal