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Not quite sure why you felt the need to flex and get personal, but let me return the favor.

From your initial email:

"Good morning Andy and all: I have had some luck using large steel cookie and or cupcake sheets under a good Mag Mount, preferably lying on the ground but with some luck on a dining room table with visual access to the direction in which I wanted to transmit."

So you've worked HF with an 8 foot hamstick sitting on a "large steel cookie tray" on the dining room table? And were able to successfully work DX in the direction of your dining room window?

Well, as has been clearly established long before this email thread started "Anything can radiate" as proven by QSOs accomplished using 100 watt light bulbs or cantenna dummy loads.

And it has also been clearly established that during the Korean War, propagation was a bit better than it is today. While only going back to the 1980s, my local club, for a public demonstration took a hybrid transceiver and "loaded up" a mattress spring and worked a few neighboring states on HF... but I don't recall that leading to countless hams putting mattress springs up on the roof of their house instead of straining a Dipole or other more conventional antenna.

Given the opportunity to put a modest antenna on top of his apartment building I suspect few would cite a hamstick on a cookie tray as their "go-to" antenna. I suggested, as did a couple other responders, that he consider a hamstick Dipole (efficiency wont be great, but with elevation and horizontal polarization, it could be a great option with minimal visual impact).

So how big were those chain link fence sections? I suspect they were each close to a resonant quarter wave length or odd multiple thereof...

Take care, stay safe,

Ken, N2VIP