Hello Gordon,

The 20th edition of the ARRL Antenna Handbook has some
information on a 40 meter, masthead half-sloper as you
described. You might find that interesting.

As Doug mentioned, this is basically a single-band antenna,
except that it would probably work ok on odd harmonic
frequencies. And it would very definitely radiate on other
frequencies in an emergency, provided you used an
appropriate tuner.

Good luck!

Chuck












Gordon Wedman wrote:
Over the holidays I killed some time looking through a few back issues of
Cruising World. In the April 1986 issue a boat-based ham operator said he
used a top-fed backstay antenna with excellent results AND he had no in-hull
ground plane. He said he connected the shield from his feed wire to the
mast-side of the backstay and this allowed the mast and all the standing
rigging to act as a ground plane. He didn't say anything about using
stand-offs between the feed wire and the mast. I would think you would get
a lot of signal loss over that much length if you didn't use stand-offs?
If a person could put up with the appearance and make sure the whole set-up
didn't get torn down by sails/running rigging, would this really give good
performance? I don't recall reading about this type of set-up so I guess
its not too common on recreational boats but maybe it could be worth
considering in some situations?