[Reece]

As stated, these sets were intended to work with long, straight wire antennas, preferably outdoor. Barring that, as long a wire as possible indoors stretched around the room will work some. Loops and telescoping antennas just look like a short wire to a radio like this. It needs length and stretched out, not coiled up in any way. Recall that AM DX signals improve at night. Also a ground connection is important for them. By the way, this is an AC radio, intended to work on Alternating Current only. Some later transformerless radios were called AC/DC, because they could be plugged into either Alternating or Direct Current. There were places particularly in large cities where some sections had DC. I don't think there is any of that left now, the whole country being on AC.