[cjsuk]

We’re on a solar cycle minima at the moment which slightly ruins ionospheric propagation on HF which is the least “line of sight” set of bands. However it’s on the up again so in a year or so expect 1000km regularly.

I regularly hear East European stations here in London, UK with a random length bit of wire strung off a home made 40m receiver and into a tree though. Noise here is terrible so I have had to use very heavy narrow bandwidth audio and IF filtering.

If you want long distance, be prepared to use very narrow bandwidth i.e. learn CW though (its not that hard although I have trouble copying some of the faster stations).