Hi Chuck
I kind of suspected that it would only work well over a limited frequency
range and that the typical antenna tuners would not help. Thanks to Doug
and yourself for confirming this. I'm not planning on installing one as I
have a conventional backstay arrangement but I was just wondering if anyone
actually used this kind of setup as I'd not seen it discussed.
I guess if you are a Ham and tend to work only one band this might be a good
arrangement for your boat.

"chuck" wrote in message
...
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?