How come I only pick up Italian and the area stations?

[4Z7JAD]

As you can see from my callsign, Im from Israel.
I have an Yaesu 857D with FC 40 Autotuner which is connected to a 22 meter copper wire.
It seems that the only voice stations I can hear on HF are stations from Italy, and thats pretty much it. ( I dont know about CW since I cant speak that language yet:) )
What could be the explnation for that? I tried Day and Night.

Thank you for the answer :)

[5B4AJB]

Could be the orientation of the wire, most of it's sensitivity happens to be towards that direction? - the Italians are pretty strong in this part of the world (I'm not far from you), how about the Russians?

Are you using a dipole or a long-wire antenna?

[4Z7JAD]

Im using a long wire antenna (well not exatcly, I dont have place for one. Im using a 22 meter copper wire which stretches from my window down the building), and the only direction i have is northwest (Im on the coastline). I heard one Russian last week.
by the way if Im already speaking to you, would you mind trying to have a chat with me on 2m?
Im pretty sure I heard 2 stations from Cyprus yesterday (sunday morning) on 145.65. Im 95% positive it was Greek.

[AB3NK]

The antenna wire needs to be sloped in a 45 degree angle or horizontal.

You also need to cut it to length - so it is resonant on the frequency you desire to transmit on.

Might I suggest that you purchase the ARRL Antenna Book.

[Lafayette]

Hello and Good Day,
In answering your question, you first must understand how communications works.
All effective communications is Line Of Sight.
This means that the transmitter and the receiver are in the same general area.

Lets use 140 mhz as a example.
Line of sight for 140 mhz would probably be somewhere in the area of about 65 miles, due to the fact that the curvature of the earth permits the radio wave to bend and refract over the horizon and even if you built two 1000' towers, stood on top of the one tower and looked out towards the other tower, all you would be able to see would be the light blinking on the top of the other tower.

At higher frequencies it would reduce at the square of the distance and at lower frequencies it would increase.

Now - because your HF signal has the ability to bounce off the atmosphere - either the D or E layer, depending on which - that is how far your signal will travel.

One E Hop - 1500 miles
One D hop - 500 - 1000 miles.

So what is happening is that you are too close to receive some signals - anything less then 500 - 1000 miles, but cannot hear anything more then 1500 miles away, due to the limitations of your particular site and your antenna and the atmosphere.

There are still some things that you can do.

You can buy a better radio - Transceiver!
You would need to put your antenna up higher.
You can build or buy a more efficient antenna that displays some type of forward gain.
Or you can move.

That is how communications works...

[ChrisJefferies]

I have exactly the same issue.

I'm using a softrock lite 2 hardwired to 40metres and a long wire (100ft 66ft/33ft) running north-south. I'm based in the middle of Ireland and most of the traffic I hear is from Italy. I'd like to pick up transmissions from the UK but if I understand Lafayette correctly the UK is too close to Ireland to pick up 7mhz transmissions, is that right?

Does that mean that 20metres I'd pick up France (approximately and at 10metres I'd pick up the UK but at 2metres its pretty much line of sight and therefore too far away?