Re: Recieving SSB Transmissions on the VR-500

Hi Jimmy .. welcome.

Since I seem to live with this radio 24/7, I wanted to use it in the back bedroom on the far side of the house, away from my shack, where all my antennas downleads enter the house. 
I had this cheaply priced 17 year old unused Radio Shack scanner antenna that is only 20 inches in height, still on the roof on that side of the house, unused, with RG6 cable, 50 feet, still attached. You can see the antenna here:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103641
At only 20 inches, it's easily 'mobile', if you want it to be.
Mine is attached to a vent stack.

So, I threw antenna theory out the window, and got to work.
I used an RCA adapter, ran another 65 feet of shielded speaker cable with RCA connectors, on top of the 50 feet of RG6, (Oh My!), and fed it to the scanner via a BNC/RCA adapter.
Easier to take on and off, (I'll get to that in a minute), and it makes a better connection versus a minijack, that has a better chance of going bad after time.

So how good does this setup work on shortwave?
I'm in extreme North Central Arkansas, right by Missouri.
Here's some favorite SSB frequencies I hear regularly with this setup:
5,520, 5.505, 5.550, 5.680 (a rescue frequency, WoW), 5.598,5.616, 6.227, 6.516, 6.519, 6.577, 6.586, 6.604, 6.628, 8.806, 8.879, 8.892,, 8.914, 8.918, 9.007, 10.051, 11.175, 11.232, 13.927, 14.300.

As you can see, it covers the gamut of military air and overseas MWARA traffic. Some of these are even heard just on the rubber ducky, an aftermarket one.

The front end on this radio is so hot, I think a piece of random wire would work. True, if I bring it in the shack and hook it up to a multiband sloper designed for SW, it works better. But this setup works great for me, and works marvelous on the scanner frequencies, at times right on par with my Grove Scanner beam.

I also like to medium wave DX, and I use a Select-a-tenna for that.
I run it straight to the radio, via  cable with a minijack on one side, and an RCA jack on the other. This way, on the radio, I am not messing with manually taking off the BNC connector each time. Simply leave the BNC to RCA adapter on the radio, as it's much easier to 'change antennas' via a simple slide on and off RCA jack, and relieving any strain on the radio's BNC connector.
Turn on the radios attenuater AND narrow filter, and now I have great reception on MW, especially at night, virtually every 10 khz has a channel I can hear.

Yep, a great little radio. It's the jack of all trades.
It may not do any one radio function very well, but it is able to 'do them all."