I glanced at the IAC website which makes no performance claims for the SWL antenna. Exactly what is that antenna supposed to do better than a long random hunk of wire (over all those many bands)?

The subject of Bazooka antennas comes up on eham occasionally. Here antenna expert W8JI and others talk about them;

http://www.eham.net/ehamforum/smf/index.php?action=printpage;topic=79314.0

"1.  Radio Moscow used to send you "awards"?" Don't know about you Komrad but they never gave ME any awards.

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- Others listened to Radio Moscow; I ONLY listened to Ronald Reagan on TV

- You built the receiver you used

- In my case the above receiver ONLY picked up CHU Canada

- Re-tuned the family AM radio above and below its intended range

- You pretty much got electrical shocks from everything

- You knew nothing about antennas - No one knew anything about antennas

- When you owned zero test equipment or tools

- Only electronic genius you knew was the TV repair guy

- Took bus to ham/surplus stores

- (If ham) lived in utter fear of the FCC. I actually got two Pink Tickets. (Heath VFO, ya know)

- Bought replacement tubes at Walgreens

- All the good AM stations began with "X."

- Local AM (KWK in St Louis) ended the scourge of Rock n Roll with this:
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N92bt6W30UI ]

I'm old enough to remember when those conventions would take over the Chase Hotel here, once the finest hotel west of Chicago.

Congrats to the Lebanon radio group. Heck, that facility looks better than Dayton. The location isn't far from the Lake of the  Ozarks and Branson.

"It will be held in November 2013 in Lebanon, Missouri."

Now I live in St Louis MO and my first question: Where the heck is Lebanon MO?  By car it's 150+ miles away from me, down hwy 44, and pretty far from Kansas City, too. Their convention center looks nice, at least. 

Guess the convention will be convenient... for the 14,000 people who live in Lebanon

Happened to me quite a few times with my DXE plate in the 3+ years I've had the antenna.  Replaced the bolts several times. Much easier to happen with their 43' verticals than with small verticals, like a Hustler. You do get better with practice. Best to use two people and wait for a calm day.

I lived in about the tallest high rise apartment building in St Louis for many years. Luckily I had a nice balcony on the 18th floor and windows that opened. Radio signals did not penetrate it. I actually spoke (on the air)  to a ham who was a main design engineer on its construction years before. He assured me it was VERY well built from concrete and steel beams. I've lived on the south side of the building. You could hear almost nothing from the north.

In such a building you'd probably be best to tape wire along a window or use the metal window frame.  Who knows how a loop would work near metal beams hidden in concrete? Or even closer to metal lath in walls?

The trick is to experiment. Yes, a piece of wire out a window may work as well as anything.

You're providing almost no info.

What frequencies and services are you most interested in? Do you currently live in this apartment?  Main goal of an apartment antenna is usually to reduce man made noise which is often the major limiting factor. Can you run a simple thin wire out a window? What floor in this apartment are you on? What kind of receiving equipment will you use? If it is a tall building, what is is made from? 

That may have been true 60 years ago. On my TS-850 I came up with an S-unit being about 4.7 dB and only on the middle portion of the scale.  Difference between say S-2 and S-3 was much less. And I was only testing on 40 meters where I was trying to get an accurate determination of the performance of my array of phased verticals. S-meters can vary by band or even by frequency within a band according to one article.

Two points about the almighty dB:

Don't let anyone tell you can't hear a one dB difference. My Flex radio is unique in having a lab quality S-meter. I can definitely detect such difference in band noise level. Also, I can adjust my tuner to well under 2:1 just peaking band noise by ear.

As for the difference in about 10 dB, look at the huge differences in the scores of high power and low power stations in the CQWW contest. Even when you adjust for the generally better antennas used by HP vs LP, you have to conclude that HP helps... a lot!

After a lot research years ago, I concluded that a single dB of transmit power helps CQWW scores by several percent.

Russian sleeper cell? I'm picturing an HQ-129 and a Heath DX-100.

Some real details on Kenwood's new high end transceiver due out "End of February."

"Simply touch the main screen for quick QSY re-tuning."

"The device uses POWER MOSFET VRF150MP,which runs at 50V, with push-pull. You can obtain a high, stable output of 200 W on all bands" What do you think?

What's the max display bandwidth?

http://www.hamradio.co.uk/userfiles/file/TS-990S_NPRI_final%20(2).pdf

I was just looking at Tom's page on longwave Non-Directional Beacons last night. Best resource I've found on their technical aspects. Explains why no two of them seem to look the same on my scope.

http://www.w8ji.com/ndb%20beacon%20fish%20buoy%20net%20beacons.htm

AXW, Mouser owes you one!

I'm aware of those small-parts sites of course, but I've never bought from them. I don't need much at a time. Here in St. Louis we at least have Radio Shack and Gateway Electronics. I'm inclined to head over to the Mouser site and buy a few assortments.

BTW, just about any shopping cart will allow the user to add and subtract items for awhile, sometimes over weeks. 

Off topic, but I have to comment that my son just bought an electronics text from Amazon that was shipped to our house from India in a few days. Cost was dirt cheap, too. Damn if I know how they pulled that off. 

All five booming in last night. 183 kHz was rock solid into Missouri for hours with an exceptionally clear channel.  I presume 160M was good too. 
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162 kHz France.
171 kHz Morocco which uses both Arabic and French
183 kHz Germany in French
189 kHz Iceland
198 kHz BBC

If these kits are too expensive, what's the alternative... building a time machine and going back to "radio row" on Cortlandt Street to pick thru piles of war surplus command sets at $2?

My son, who's never changed a fuse, is now playing with Arduinos and such. What's on the horizon except Shack and Shed?