Having been in the marine electronics business I was able to successfully install many HF radios on boats from large steel commercial fishing boats to a small 28 ft fiberglass fishing boat and sailboats. Anything metal , engine, fuel tanks,rudder posts,thru hulls, morse control cables,intercoolers outside of the hull,rub rail sections jumpered together to form one continuous loop. Dynaplates help but will not work well as the only source of ground. I once saw a carbon brush riding thru spring tension on a prop shaft, tying the prop to ground. It can be tricky as sometimes you get ground loops and you must be aware of currents that can cause electrolysis. For the antenna we primarily used a 23 ft whip, sometimes on large vessels a longwire. This was before synthesized radios and autouners. My favorite radio was the Drake TRM which had a built in manual tuner and a 50 ohm output if you wanted to use a trapped vertical. On commercial fishing boats you had to leave the dock so that the outriggers could be lowered and trawl doors put in the water as this changed the tuning quite a bit from being at the dock. Interestingly enough I think the toughest time I had tuning was on an 85 ft steel shrimp boat even with all that metal. . ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected]
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