Did you make the antenna? If yes I would be interested to see photos or a design and give it a go myself. I'm quite surprised at how many SW stations an FM dipole in the loft pulls in but LW & MW performance is poor, a wire dipole is a little better but not great.
I might make a picture tomorrow (it is dark now).
It is quite easy to make.
I used 20mm diameter flexible pipe made to connect central heating radiators. This pipe
has a thin aluminium interior and a pvc coating on both sides of the aluminium.
I had a few pieces left over from 10 years ago. One was about 4 meter long. So I ground off the outer PVC layer for a cm or so
at each end. That is the dificult part (because a 4m long tube is not so easy to manipulate and the pvc is tougher than expected).
Then I drew a circle on the floor with a piece of chalk. The circle had a 4 meter circumference.
I then bent the tube onto the circle by hand and foot (gently step on it) to make it more or less flat
and in the right shape. The shape does not need to be a circle, but a circle maximizes the signal.
The next step was to take some flexible litz wire, cut from an old power cord (cut open the cord and inside you will find 3 such wires) and removed the insulation over for several cm to expose the copper wires. I wound this on top of the alumimum and added a garden hose fastener on top to squeeze the wire onto the pipe. This avoids the need for soldering. The other end of the flexible copper wires are attached to the amplifier. I attached the antenna in the attick of shed with a zip tie.
Note that such an antenna is directional. This matters for long wave and medium wave reception during day time. You can
point the antenna to "null out" some signals, e.g., ground waves of undesired strong transmitters or sources of interference.
At night the signals tend to come from the sky and there is no strong null for those signals.
The disadvantage of the zip tie attachment is that my antenna cannot be turned, but there is no room in the attic anyway for that
and the results is approx east-west reception, which suits me fine. I used 2 pieces of sma cable (20m and 6m)
for the antenna cable as location is important: far away from computers and electricity lines is better. It took some time to
find a suitable spot. I also added some ferrite sleeves in several places along the cable to stop common mode (may not be needed as the antenna is already not very sensitive to common mode).
This was actually my second such antenna and it above description is not entirely correct: it is for the antenna as it should be (and will
be after I fix it) and not how it actually is: I had no garden hose fasteners left and had to use screws to attach the wires. That
proved less than ideal. At one point there was a bad contact and the reception on medium wave suddenly was gone.
It was easy to fix (fasten screws). In the mean time, I ordered some extra garden hose fasteners, but mistakingly the wrong size.
The first antenna I made was only 2m diameter. I attached that one to a vertical pvc pipe. That pipe goes into a rusty tin can which
is nailed to a plank. That allows rotation by hand. Quick, dirty and ugly. I then made the bigger version to have a stronger signal on medium and long wave. The signal is even a bit on the strong side at night (gain must be set low or the airspy starts to generate spurious signals).
I think 4 m is about the max. Otherwise you may start to get problems at the higher frequencies.
However even with that version I receive FM (without the spyverter) and the 130Mhz band (planes)
About the antenna location: the attic is fine. Outside may be beter depending on the material of your house. There
is no need to mount it very high (except maybe for the higher bands).
blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk
www.satellites.co.uk
On medium wave Caroline and various UK stations come in nicely:
