I ran three versions of a long wire antenna from an apartment for several 
years.

The first wire was about 50 feet long, the second was nearly 100 feet, and 
the third was an end fed zepp for 80 meters, which was 135 feet long.

In all cases, the far end of the antenna was supported by getting a rope 
over the highest possible tree branch, while the house end of the antenna 
was attached via a small eye-bolt and insulator under the eve of my second 
story apartment.

The feed line for the long wires was simply more wire which was attached on 
the antenna side of the supporting insulator on the house end of the wire. 
In my situation, this was never more than 10 or 15 feet, as the radio and 
tuner were very near the window. The end of the wire can be connected to the 
long wire terminal of the tuner, or to the center pin of the so239 coax 
output connector. If you don't want to use a pl259 for the coax socket 
connection, a banana plug will fit nicely into the center of the so239, and 
will not render it useless for other antennas later on.

For such a setup, you do indeed need a tuner, along with a very good ground, 
or a counterpoise. The best counterpoise is a 1/4 wave of wire for each 
band, but you can use one counterpoise for most bands, especially if it is 
cut for one of the lower bands.

Some of the newer external automatic tuners from MFJ and LDG will tune the 
end fed random wire on most bands, but I wouldn't depend on the internal 
tuners for this antenna. They will either not tune it at all, or they will 
melt down, leaving you with an expensive repair job.

The end fed zepp is essentially a half wave of wire that is fed at one end 
by one side of a length of open wire or 450 ohm ladder line. The end of the 
half wave is connected to one side of the feedline, and both sides of the 
feedline are connected to the balanced terminals of the tuner. Avoid feed 
line lengths of 1/4 or 1/2 wave length.

The empty side of the ladder line acts as a counterpoise. This antenna tuned 
and performed very well for me on all hf bands excluding 17 and 15 meters. I 
could have played with the feed line length, and probably caused it to tune 
okay on those bands too.

While I liked the end fed zepp, it is fed at a very high impedance, high 
voltage point. This means that some of the smaller low end tuners won't 
handle this antenna at the 100 watt power level. While in the apartment, I 
was never running more than 25 watts, so that was not an issue for the 
smaller mfj tuners. But use a tuner with a high power rating if you are 
planning to run 100 or more watts. I doubt most automatic tuners will tune 
the end fed zepp. Otherwise, it's a good, often overlooked inexpensive 
multiband antenna solution for some restricted situations.

Mike Duke, K5XU