[jcassity]

got it, i understand everything your saying.

-on the GE set,, relocate a newly fabricated and calibrateable design loop antenna outside so it can couple with my long wire.
**this must mean i need to omit the original loop antenna, save it back.,,, or do you mean parallel in another?

--The GE is back up now, i was tinkering / experimenting on the minerva set cause i cant seem to leave well enough alone. I unplugged the 6' long 20position power strip i have dedicated to the garage sets and simply forgot to plug the strip back in. I was trying to isolate out where this minor 30 or so volts ac was coming from on the skeleton frame that holds the isolated chassis. Also i was tinkering around with an idea i had about a simple S meter for the minerva.

-provide a ref ground rod.
**i have had a dedicated ground rod since i started learning this tech a couple years ago. the 10' 3/4'' copper clad stainless rod while tied to my philco, the hallicrafters s38, the minerva, not a single radio acted any different with or without the ground rod connected. since the ground rod is near my garage, i went ahead and cad welded the sol #2 tinned and built a wall penetration/fire stopping caulk. since all my work adding a ground rod added no benefit to any of the 7 sets i have brought back to life since joining here, i went ahead and bonded the new gndrod to my garage sub panel instead as a contingency plan b to harden my ref ground out to the garage. my garage panel board has separate N and G bars so this rod aint separatly derived so dont worry on that too much. the garage now see's 12ohms.
A member here was helpin me out with a problem and ground rod condition came up so i acted accordingly to address it. Even if all my work proved to be useless or useful, attending to the probable fault was worth the time. at least at that time we knew the grounding was not my problem. weather i liked it or not, the probable fault needed to be confirmed or eliminated.

--the philco does infact have a 3 prong cord,,, yes i get what you said about using the 3rd prong as the sets ref ground with respect to reception performance, its impossible in my honest opinion to use UT ground as an RF ground,, its just too darn dirty in my opinion only.

--in all my years living here, i have not found my UT service entrance ground rod, and im betting since its build was 1976, prior to NEC, i bet i would be finding corroded friction connections or acorn taps which are not good. inside my panel board i read with my AEMC ground tester that i have 87ohms,,, not bad but ,,, i bet it could be much lower like commercial applications where i try to target less than 15ohms even if we have to drill a water well & drop in sol #2 with a cad welded rod. Now you got me thinking about a counter poise ground system, i have plenty of welded wire i could lay out flat below grade,, maybe just a 4'x8' sheet of it would do. A guy i know from this generation of tube radios told me that if i have a ground rod properly in and noise remains, trench a horizontal to the left and right of your rod then lay another rod in the 24'' or so ditch then bond the two together. lay out some salt mix then back fill & compact. he said that when he was at raytheon, they did this on some of the arrays in dam neck va navel base and it helped cancel out unwanted noises to about 40% additional when a megger was used in re-commissioning the grounding.