"Rich" wrote in message
om...
Hi all. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to get on the air!
I'm in a big apartment building ... I have these hot water pipes which
feed radiators on every floor ... I'm on the 11th floor.

I'm thinking that I can throw 100' wire out the window (to radiate)
and ground to the hot water pipes. Thoughts? Any risk of damage to
the heating system? I don't know how the water's heated...

How much power are you planning to run? You could make the radiators hot
with rf, too. The cold-water pipes would be better, as they usually go
directly into the ground, whereas the hot-water system goes into a boiler.
There are a lot of joints in both between you and ground, so it may not
matter much. The pipes won't be very close to true ground potential but may
work as a counterpoise to your wire. Worth a try.

When I lived in Manhattan's East Village in the 1970s, I was on the third
floor of a six-floor building with a fire escape. I scraped 80 years of
paint and scale off the metal and put on a 'crocodile' clip when I wanted to
get on the air. My counterpoise was a piece of insulated wire running along
the baseboards. After working W1AW and mentioning the antenna (the QSL card
came addressed to "Roasted Pigeons") I even got mentioned in the ARRL
Antenna Book! Using about 200 W I was able to work ZL and VK on 40 CW, and I
was surrounded by other buildings. so your wire is worth a try.

73,

"PM"