Verticals require more attention to ground but the goal should be to increase the antenna current, thus increasing radiated signal. ground into water seems like a waste but has DC grounding value. I use hung vertical dipoles (20 and 15) with no need for ground and they work amazingly well. I have tried letting wire or zinc ribbon strips drop into saltwater to ground verticals and there is no value I can detect over something simpler, like tying to existing structures or running a above water wire counterpoise. Vertical dipoles require no Rf ground and propagate at low angle and high efficiency. Far effects over water are what counts, more than grounding, except in verticals to get higher antenna current. K7VO
On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:38 AM Frank C Richards <[email protected]> wrote: > 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] > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to [email protected] > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
