Gary Schafer wrote in
:

And just how would you recommend supporting that 23 foot whip mounted
on top of the pilot house?

regards
Gary



Shrouds?....(c;

The discussion was about where to mount the antenna for best radiation.
There are many antennas and mounts that require no cheap little plastic
support like Shakespeare uses on their antennas.

What I'd like to see mounted on top of his pilot house is an antenna like
the Moonraker 18B, with a proper, supportive deck mounting:
http://www.moonraker.com.au/marine.htm#MFHF
Click on 18B for the PDF file. Get the untuned version.

I'd mount this antenna THROUGH the cabin roof so it comes out in the
overhead panel or a cabinet with the tuner mounted out of the weather
inside the pilot house inside the panel. We have no pictures of his
pilot house so we can't see where that might happen. With the tuner
inside the boat, it'd take a direct lightning hit to destroy it, not
seawater. No cables, connectors, wires only the whip would be in the
weather, solving the big corrosion problems completely. This antenna
mount is designed to do just that, feeding the RF through the roof into
the dry tuner inside.

No extra "support" for the bassboat swingdown is necessary....

All this depends on other data we don't have. Where does he go
boating?....Is he going to be going to sea, or is he going up and down
the ditch with all the drawbridges? (If he's not going to sea, there's no
point in HF comms, anyway, so I assume he's going to sea.)....How high is
his mast over the pilothouse?....Does he need a swingdown mount, really,
or are we doing this just because that's the way it's always been done?

We don't have all the data. I was just responding to where the antenna
would be best mounted for best radiation. That's not necessarily the
best for his situation....