You can do several things with a balcony, especially one with wooden 
railings.

I'll make several postings because everything won't fit into one message.

What I am about to describe in this message will require the use of a manual 
tuner. I doubt most automatic tuners will handle it.

I once took a 100 foot roll of speaker wire, pulled it completely apart, and 
used only the half that matched the color of my balcony.

I began the installation at the radio end. I ran the wire along the wall and 
through the window, using a borrowed telephone company type wire stapler as 
I went to keep the wire in place.

I couldn't reach the window from the balcony, so I reached as far over the 
railing as I could with my cane extended toward the window, while a friend 
inside tossed the roll of wire over the cane. I then raised the cane, thus 
sliding the roll over to the balcony. Yes, my friend thought I was nuts, but 
he later got a ham ticket!

Once on the balcony, I stapled the wire around the edge of the roof, and 
then down one corner to the floor, where I ran the roll out going back 
around the baseboard of the balcony.

The 40 meter counterpoise I described yesterday was along the baseboard of 
my bedroom. For that particular installation, I didn't add any others.

You don't worry about the pattern of such an installation, you just use it.

That crazy setup played amazingly well on 40, 20, and 10 meters with my old 
10 watt FT7, and worked well enough for me to be heard on my local 75 meter 
net unless the static level was high.


Mike Duke, K5XU
American Council of Blind Radio Amateurs