> Alan, how well does your fifty foot dipole work with the 803A?  I'm 
 > considering the construction of a dipole antenna from Grove 
 > Enterprises to hook up with my 818CS radio.  Some others who have 
 > the Sangeans and RS DX series radios say long wire antennas have a 
 > tendency to blow the front end of the radio when there is a zap of 
 > static electricity.  I'm having second thoughts about erecting that 
 > dipole antenna after all the negative comments coming up from 
 > rec.radio.shortwave and other sources.  Just exactly what kind of 
 > set up do you have reagrding the dipole Antenna into the 803A 
 > receiver?  Thanks for your reply to the above.  Happy 
 > Monitoring...Brian.
MY dipole works allright, though I suspect that the Grove Enterprises one 
will work even better considering that it probably has been designed by 
someone with a EE degree.  Mine is just 14 guage speaker wire, 25ft north and 
25ft south, connected to some RU75 coax via a 300 to 75 ohm matching 
transformer.  Not a thing of beauty, and one of these days I'll have to break 
out the textbooks and build one properly, balanced and the dipole length set 
for the freq range I listen to.
DON"T USE A LONG WIRE!  THey're just murder on Sangean pre-amps, and without 
a spark arrester, they a properly tuned for lightning strikes.  In any case, 
during lightning season, I hook up a small neon bulb between the coax and 
true ground (a pipe froma nearby well).  Whenever the bulb glows, I 
disconnect everything in a hurry.
Hope this helps
Alan
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