Living in an apartment off campus, there aren't many good ways to put up an HF antenna. End fed halfwaves are a no-go, verticals aren't possible, and mag loops aren't cheap. I figured I'd try taking a look at my rain gutter, and surprisingly I was getting ~450ohms across the entire HF band. 

After adding a 9:1 transformer, I was getting low enough VSWRs to exclude a tuner - I couldn't believe my VNA for a few seconds with how well it seemed to work. I'm using both the shielding of my coax and a 2nd wire as my counterpoise, and adjusting both lengths can adjust my VSWR based on which band I want to transmit or listen in on.

I've made contacts on 7MHz (40m) FT8 and CW (morse code) as far away as Russia and New Zealand and phone sideband contacts all the way to California all on <20W all from my rain gutter! Ham radio rewards tinkering:)

I've isolated noise from the washing machines our complex has. Most QRM goes away at night, making the 40 meter/7MHz Ham band my primary operating band.