I've been a licensed amateur radio operator
since October 2000 with call sign KC0IZI.

My interest started as a short-wave listener in the 1950s
with a Zenith Transoceanic receiver. I still have a 3000-1.

For the moment, I'm living in an apartment complex
at Wray, Colorado, about 10 miles west of the tri-state
border of Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska.

My apartment has a deck and a welded-iron railing
and overhead as shown in the photo below.

I'm using an end-fed 21 gauge wire of about 60 feet,
Kenwood TS-440S transceiver, homebrew tuner and a D-104 mic.
Antenna is configured horizontally in an `L' pattern and works
like a Near Vertical Incident Skywave (NVIS) to provide me
with very good transmission capability regionally, and out to
1750 miles from stations I have contacted. I don't have an AMP.
I've tried to keep the antenna as far from the steel as possible.

This homebrew tuner is the key to multi-band capability.

As of February 7, 2013 I completely reworked the antenna and
its counterpoise and grounding and so far I've easily worked
stations on the 80, 60, 40, 20, and 12 meter bands.

Transceiver is grounded to the electrical ground pole of the household
A/C plug which is only about eight feet away from external main
electrical ground of the building.

I can also operate the station from batteries should the
power grid fail. I have a solar panel to recharge the batteries,