An antenna for an oldie

[Raccoon]

I have an old Halicrafters S-19r SkyBuddy shortwave receiver .
Everything on it works good ... it needed a few new tubes which I replaced , aside from that everythings original and it's in very good running condition . I have a copper wire that I've been using for an antenna which runs outside , but it doesn't receive all the bands the way it should . The S-19r has coverage of 545KHz to 44MHz in 4 different bands . I was wondering what might be the best antenna system to use for this radio so that I'll be able to properly receive clearly on all 4 bands ?

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

I have been into shortwave listening for 30 years and have never used anything more than a piece of wire.Put a wire as long and as high as you can reasonably do so and it will work just dandy.Just remember that we are now at the bottom of the solar cycle so the higher bands will appear dead quite often.Twenty meters will die in the evening and everything above it will die even earlier.Even my Kenwood and Yaesu radios on the 3 element yagi don't pick up much above 20m after dark except when Mother Nature decides to be friendly.In a few years things will change for the better.

Just reread your post.If you replaced some tubes it is possible the radio needs an alignment.The differance in capacitance between the old tubes and the new ones may require some RF stages to be tweaked.I had to do that to a Hammurland HQ-180 I worked on and it made a big differance.