Observation:
Present day installs rarely actually conform to the rules, in fact, since it's inception in 1938, Part 15 AM operations have always played fast and loose with the rules.
Consistently non-compliant.
The 1940s through the 1960s it was mostly the teen kids and college students always bending the rules.
1970s, it was the Highway Departments and National Parks non-compliant installs which were most notable.
1980-1990s was when the talking billboards were most predominant, wide spread multi-million dollar nationwide business and every one of those installs were clearly non-compliant. So were the highly publicized Atlantic Records installs, and most of the airport part 15 radio installs were non-compliant (only LAX with it cable installs were compliant).
The 2000s on up to the present day.. It appears to be primarily the hobbiest who's installs don't quite meet the 3 meter plus lead if used 10ft max, but the NPS also still uses them today and I suspect it highly unlikely any of those are ground mounted installs.
The entire 85 year history of part 15 AM is completely saturated, in every era, with a non-compliant consistency.
From years of research I can provide the history of a great many successful part 15 AM operations, but I'm unable to provide history of many legitimately compliant operations, because there simply haven't been that many documented over the last 85 years.
When it comes right down to it, most of part 15 AMs history exist primarily on a "no harm, no foul" basis, and not on the compliance of the rules itself.
And that's still the way it is today.
Absolutely true! Here's two videos of a so called part 15 legal set up that is technically not in compliance. One is a Rangemaster with non compliant ground and ground lead and another that is a range test. And you know that to get this kind of range it is stretching the technical rules to do it. In fact a lot.
@mark In the comments of the first video someone asked:
Looks like a well set up station. What distance did you end up getting?
To which he replied:
About a mile out, we could barely hear it, but the effective range is more like 1000 feet or so. It did pretty good for Part 15.
Although his installation using the fence as a kind and if elevated ground plain or whatever - is a "little fast and loose", his actual range is not particularly unrealistic. Not sure where he's located or what the ground conductivity there is, but a 100% compliant install certainly does have the potential to achieve the range he demonstrates in the video.