In article ,
bradleyj wrote:


Thanks agaifor everyone's input.

To clarifwhy I am installing a SSB. My boat is a 28' documented
vessel with
a fisheries endorsement. I fish commercially as much as
100 nm from shore.

snipped for brevity.......

Noback to the installation. I'm leaning toward a guyed installation
on the
pilot house roof. This will get the antenna up and away from
all metal
structures. I drew up a sketch of the concept, but I still
can't seem to
upload any picture files to this server. I'm planning on
going with a
Shakespeare 5390 17.5' fiberglass coated whip. I'm
thinking of attaching
three stainless guy wires about 4' up from the
base. The idea I have for
attaching anchors for the guy wires is to
fabricate three aluminum brackets
with holes to clip the guy wires to
and installing them 120apart on the
antenna whip by wrapping them
with fiberglass tape and encapsulating with
resin, much the same way
that the eyes on fishing rods are attached to the
rod blanks. The
stainless steel guy wires will attach to three points on the
edge of
the pilot house roof. My question is will these metal brackets and
guy
wires cause problems with antenna performance (or roast the occupants of

the boat)? The brackets will be electrically isolated from the
conductors
inside the whip by the fiberglass coating on the whip, but
will RF energy
still be affected (shunted down through the guy wires to
the pilot house)?
Does anyone else have any other ideas?


Ok, now we have just about enough information to make some relativly
speaking, informed observations.
1. A 17.5 Ft unloaded whip isn't going to be much of a radiator in the
MF/HF Marine Radio Bands, below 8 Mhz, no matter what autotuner
you put under it.
2. Just who are you planning to talk to with this MF/HF Radio? Most
of the High Seas Public Corespondence Stations went off the air
a decade ago, so that leaves Private Coast Stations, which may
or may not want to handle your traffic, unless you actually
setup a scheduale with them.
3. You maybe are thinking that the local USCG will actually be
listening to the High Seas Calling Frequencies, and they
actually, may be, but for your operational area, the MF and low
HF Frequencies give the comm's for that area, and your
antenna isn't actually going to preform good enough to allow
resonable expectation of succesful communications.
4. As Larry states, it is a very good thing that you have a 406
EPIRB aboard for Distress Alerting, because if you are depending
on the above MF/HF Radio to save your life, best you get lots
of Life Insurance, and buy a Plot before you go out past VHF
coverage.
5. I suppose you could have a Wx Ballon and Hydrogen Canister aboard
and use that to lift a decent length MF Antenna for Emergency
Communications, but just how well are you going to be able to do
that while in an Emergency Situation.

Yea, Yea I know that the FVSA says you have to fit a MF/HF Radio in order
to be out passed VHF Coverage, in Sea Area A2, but in that area it is
designated that MF comms should be used, and your Antenna System
is going to be more like a Dummy Load, at MF Frequencies than an
antenna.

Bruce in alaska
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add a 2 before @