"MC" wrote in message [snip]
I have attached the wire via home made insulators (made from pieces of
drilled 1" plastic pipe) at both ends and have attached the coax (TV grade)
directly to the wire at the end near my entrance door. This is then
attached to th "Li-Z" phono antenna socket at the back of my DX-394 (B
revision).

Presumably the LO-Z input, not the HI-Z. Switching between inputs can
have some interesting and maybe useful effects, the differences
varying with frequency.

[snip]
I have no antenna tuner or other equipment (wouldn't know how to use them
even if I did). What other things can I do to improve things, especially in
the lower 1-3Mhz where I get awful noise (I do not get a huge amount of
noise above this and the higher the freq the less noise I get).

If the noise source is primarily inside your house, shielding the
DX-394 can help. With an antenna of that size, you are probably
overloading it with strong MW signals causing the generation of hash
in this region. A high pass filter to attenuate the MW signals will be
a great help.

For more on how to get the most out of your DX-394, join the 600
member http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RADIOSHACKDX394/ .

73, Tom