MK - After all this is a NewsGroup
and 'your' Opinion is Welcome ) ~ RHF

"With my best Elvis impersonation"
Thank ya, vury vury much...

MK - Hey I guess you are right, 'we' should all
pack-up our long wire antennas and sell our radios.
Oops That's a - no, No. NO !

No. Nothing wrong with using any type of antenna.
What is getting you into trouble is applying the technique
used with one particular type of antenna, and imply that it
applies to all. And also you are giving credit to the wrong thing
that improves the antenna you are using. It ain't the ground
in itself, or the transformer, which is almost never actually
needed. It's the decoupling of the feedline. The only reason
ground is mentioned is cuz it's the method used to help
decouple the feedline.
But still in the big picture, the random is fairly lame vs other
choices. It's just how far you want to go with it. If I had to
transmit using random wires, "which I have tried", I would
be miserable. Poor overall performance in general, and a
nightmare as far as rf problems in the shack, etc. Being I
already have full size dipoles for most of the HF bands, it
would be silly for me to use random wires for SWL.
And once you compare the two types, it's not too likely you
would want to use the random wire if you have room for
dipoles. I've also used full size HF ground planes. I often
run one for 40m, 36 ft at the base on a mast. The antenna is
nearly 70 ft tall. It is killer for long haul on the lower -mid HF
bands
late at night. On a path to Australia, that GP would beat my
dipole at 36 ft by appx 4 s units. Using that ground plane, and
1 KW of power I would always be over S 9 in Australia. Once got
a report of 20 db over 9 in Tokyo. That antenna browns the food.
And my dipole would probably beat the average random wire
by 4 s units. Then on the upper HF bands, I have a yagi.
Will hear stuff that wouldn't exist on many random wires due to
the forward gain, and f/b ratio. And it's steerable from the shack.
Use a random wire instead? Thanks, but no thanks.. :/
But I realize, not everyone is me... BTW, a random wire must be
at least one wavelength long on the band in use to qualify as a
"long wire". Pretty easy on the upper bands, but will need a pretty
long wire on the low bands. IE: 4 mhz will need appx 230-240 ft...
MK