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It's as I feared......SWL is not a popular hobby today since it not something the ipod generations know much about. They like everything spoon fed to them with no challenges that make SWL so much fun.
Truth is there isn't much on this on the web even and what you find is oooold!
I've spent a lot of time plowing through old text on SWL with little (as you might expect since they were written when portables were still toys) of the info even mentioning portables. Today the old boat anchor table tops have been replaced by some very good portable radios but portables have REALLY sensitive front ends that overload badly with old tech antennas, preselctors, antennas and such.
For the time being I'm going to run barefoot to see how much help my portables do need before I throw any money at any other equipment. When I do buy any equipment the first piece will be a MFJ-1045c and see what happens and/or noise filter.
I had a lot of fun with SW portables in the 60s-80s. You're right about the overloading! They weren't designed for big antennas. The 31m band was always my favorite.
I don't know whether a preselector would help that much. The main problem is too sensitive a front end,
What kind of problems are you having? Are the local AM stations causing problems, or other shortwave stations?
At this point just basicly digging out faint stations or stations that appear off freq. in many places.
My basic goal is to take some of the freq. sorting load off the portable so that it can listen to a cleaner band. I'm not to concerned about boosting signals since that leads to overload very quickly. For this reason I keep my antennas really simple avoiding really long wires or other antenna types with massive gain.
If I am bothered by AM I don't see it since I live rural with all AM stations miles (!) away.
OK I finally understand what you are talking about - an antenna tuned to a particular frequency you want to receive. I have not done that with SW (there seems to be less out there anymore, BTW) but I did use an analog Channel 7 dedicated TV antenna for a while (wrecked by a tree limb not too long after the switch-over to DTV, and not much good now even if it was in mint condition)
OK I finally understand what you are talking about - an antenna tuned to a particular frequency BAND you want to receive. I have not done that with SW (there seems to be less out there anymore, BTW) but I did use an analog Channel 7 dedicated TV antenna for a while (wrecked by a tree limb not too long after the switch-over to DTV, and not much good now even if it was in mint condition)
The radio tuner will do the freq. selection after the preselector narrows the band to select from.
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They like everything spoon fed to them with no challenges that make SWL so much fun. 
