hi all:
well today I fabricated a mount for my hf stick to attach to the vertical 
upright bars on my metal balcony railing.
I got creative with some you clamps, L brackets and an old NMO trunck mount 
bracket.
The end result isn't pretty, but it's solid and keeps the stick vertical and 
the bass of the antenna above the top of the railing.
I attached a pair of 16.5 foot radials to the ground of the antenna and 
tuned the whip for a low swr.  I had to push the whip about 6 inches into 
the top of the resonator to achieve a 1.5 to one match on 20 meters.
The radials are just stretched out about 10 feet along the balcony, and then 
coiled not in any particular order, but they don't cross at any point.
the balcony railing is a good 10 feet long and another 4 feet on the short 
part of the L...there's quite allot of alluminum there which also acts as a 
ground radial of sorts.
the antenna is positioned about 18 inches away from the building wall, and 
about 2 and a half feet away from my vhf/uhf dual band antenna of about the 
same height at the corner of the railing.
The whip sticks up over the eves though so that's good.
As soon as I got the swr down to below two, I tuned around and heard plenty 
of stations working the contest...this was around 1830 local mountain time.

I chose a loud one and made my call with 100W...to my surprise and delight 
he came back instantly. I made 4 contacts in quick succession to colorado, 
california, arazona and alaska.
The noise level is high as is normal with a vertical, around S5 to S7...the 
alaskan station was right at the noise floor, but heard me just fine.
I heard the europeans coming in earlier but that was before I had mounted 
the antenna and tuned it etc...just leaning against the wall and no radials.

Perhaps tomorrow I can try for some europeans.
at any rate, i'm quite happy with the results.  I've got to find a better 
mount, or build a better one now that I know what it should look like.
I'm also sure other resonators will work at the same location, so perhaps 
delving into 40 and possibly 80 meters might be an option with some more 
radial wire thrown out.
The antenna hears very well on 17 and 15 meters...i heard nothing on 12 and 
10...and oddly enough, it'll tune with the TS2000's tuner on 6 meters.
perhaps I can pickup a 17 meter resonator and join the net as well.

regards
Colin