Drain Vent Stealth Antenna
Light up your house with RF energy (well, not really...it's an antenna idea)
An article from the ARRL <http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2008/07/05/10192/> caused a rather wicked thought process about yet another way to hide your ham radio antenna.
Most homes today have PVC drain vent pipes. Depending on the home, some of these vents go all the way from rooftop, through the 2nd floor, through the 1st floor, and into the basement. Now, think about this...drain vents are for air flow to allow liquid to drain away without sucking the liquid block out of the P-traps or S-traps under sinks and such. This function does not require a lot of air flow.
If you were to insert a wire (lets call it an "antenna" for sake of argument) into your roof vent pipe and connect to the bottom end of that wire you would have a totally hidden vertical antenna. If you cut the drain vent pipe and insert a Tee-fitting at the lower location you could use a pipe-plug or pipe-cap on the Tee-fitting to make a water and air-tight connection to this wire. Just drill the pipe cap and insert a bolt through it before installing it on the Tee-Fitting. Connect your roof-to-Tee wire to this bolt on the inside of the fitting, and your lead to the antenna tuner to the outside of this bolt after you have installed the cap or plug in the Tee-fitting.
No, I have no idea what the vent pipe dielectric effect might be on such an antenna, but whatever it is it would be hidden from the local homeowner gestapo and other anti-ham radio complainers.
What were you doing on your roof yesterday...? "Oh, I was just installing a metal screen (don't call it a capacitive top-hat!) to keep little birdies from falling down my drain vent and dying there". This gets you kudos from local environmental cry-babies, and allows you to have a stealth vertical for your ham radio activities.
NOTES: