Here's one idea (some selfish motivation here):
Loop antennas are very helpful in MW and HF reception. A "loop" can be a coil of wire on a ferrite core, such as those found in a simple AM broadcast radio. It can also be a loop of wire on a frame, possibly 0.5 meters or so on a side. The loop is rotated for best reception. Best reception can be strongest signal or the elimination of a strong signal to allow reception of a weaker signal. The loop can also be tuned to the frequency of interest for better performance.
What you might do is develop a controller that would have a memory - that would position the loop based on some input that you'd provide - a switch, keypad, etc. You could take this quite far - possibly interfacing the receiver so that the loop is auto-tuned.
This note barely touches the surface but it seems a project like this could be kept simple or increased in complexity. The idea is "selfish" in the sense that this would be something I might do someday. If you do it first then share - saves me some work.