My apologies for reviving an old thread but the topic seems to come up rather often.
The eggbeater article cited was copied from my web page (without attribution). I've tested it with a wideband preamp and you can get reliable range of 300'+. There is absolutely no problem with the preamp amplifying noise, at least not with any X-10 receiver I've tested with (CM17A, MR26A) nor with several other superregenerative receivers. I did have a problem using a preamp with a wideband RF receiver made in China - but I think it was just a matter of the increased signal strength overwhelming it - it did fine with just an eggbeater. I have even tested briefly using three preamps cascaded between antenna and one of the WenShing type receivers (see...
http://davehouston.org/modules.htm)
I've seen several references to a turnstile antenna. Most of these were also based on a article on my page that I took down a few years ago because the eggbeater is much easier to construct and gives much better results. The same goes for the ground-plane antennas others have referenced. At one time I had an article on a Lindenblad which worked better than the turnstile or ground-plane but, again, was both more difficult to construct and less efficient than the eggbeater.
The eggbeater can be made using insulated, solid copper wire (e.g. 14AWG) and the circular shape is not critical. I constructed one using 14AWG with rectangular elements that, while not as efficient as the circular, copper-clad steel version, was still very good. One user reported that he used 75-ohm coax for the phasing line (instead of the 93-ohm recommended) without any problem.
