There are grounds and there are are grounds.

Lightning ground
House wiring safety ground
Antenna counterpoise (ground)
Ham shack common RF bus ground

If you live in an apartment building or if you use soundcard modes you
will soon find out that using the building's electrical safety ground
as your antenna's counterpoise is a bad thing.

Dont try to use an endfed wire antenna in an apartment.
You will be unhappy if you try to use your TV and soundcard speakers as
your antenna counterpoise.

I came to the conclusion that balanced antennas are the answer.

Put up a dipole or, better yet, a loop antenna.
Balanced antennas have their "ground" as part of the antenna itself.

I personally have never used a balun at the antenna but have used
choke baluns near the rig and have used 4:1 baluns at the tuner.
I often use an antenna tuner and ladder line so am not so sure that a
balun at the antenna is a good thing under those conditions.

I have experimented with "artificial grounds"
They are just a series L-C circuit that you insert between your
station common RF bus and your counterpoise system.
Series LC circuits act like a short when tuned so the idea is that
when your station counterpoise system is tuned with the series
LC circuit, your station bussbar ground will have the highest current
path to counterpoise system ground

You can make an RF current meter with a diode a toroid
a little magnet wire and a volt meter.

MFJ artificial grounds or tuned counterpoise tuners have you
tune for max current through the series LC circuit.

I have found that max current through the series LC circuit is not
always the best setting for getting minimum rf in the shack. I
use my soundcard speaker amp as my canary - tune the
counterpoise for least audio out of the speakers.

KL7R

PS, I live in a rain forest. I dont know a thing about lightning
grounds.

"kl7r" wrote
Dont try to use an endfed wire antenna in an apartment.

========================================

If the domestic plumbing system, hot and cold pipes, central heating
system and mains wiring are connected together, then the impedance to
true ground, as a whole, will be very low. The RF potential difference
between 'ground' and true ground at the lower HF frequencies will be
small.

In principle it could be measured - IF you could find a real ground.

The actual distance in wavelengths between 'ground' and true ground,
wherever that may be, is indeterminate and inconsequential.

In the extreme case the elevated ground system can be considered as a
sort of Faraday cage with no more than normal interference between the
electrical equipments in the vicinity.

By not using low-feedpoint-impedance anrtennas, such as exactly
1/4-wavelength or 3/4-wavelength in length, things can very often
continue as normal. It is, in any case, undesirable to use very low
impedance antennas even in good ground circumstances.

And antennas crudely 1/2-wavelength in length work just as well with
either good or very poor ground systems.

Appartment and flat dwellers should not be discouraged from simple
endfed antennas. In all probability they will be successful. Very
often they are unable to erect anything else.

My own experience extends from successful working with end-fed wires
from bedrooms to a 13th storey in an appartment block. The appartment
block antenna was a 0.3 wavelength sloping wire on the 160m band, open
circuit at the bottom end fed at the top.

Ground was an aligator-clip connection to the nearest hot water
radiator pipe in the domestic central heating system. But I could just
have well used the cold water pipe to the flush-tank in the toilet had
it been nearer.

Appartment dwellers - carry on as normal!
----
Reg, G4FGQ.