"Midlant" wrote in news:zhM7i.91891$vE1.69957
@newsfe24.lga:

The VHF antenna is broken/snapped. It's still together but not much.
It's an old Archer fiberglass antenna on a swivel mount. Parents duct
taped it to hold it. Is it still good or does the fact that it's
snapped
mean that its functionality is in some way hampered.
Trying to run a knew antenna would be a nightmare. No deck access and
the cable is run under the deck, though I could tie the new one to it
and pull it thru hopefully.
Real concern is that the swivel mount seems to be part of the antenna.
It's an aluminum boat so don't want to drill new holes to accommodate
and new antenna. If the antenna itself could be replaced outside of the
mount, that would be great.
Thanks.
John




How high is it? If it's above your head, get a Metz Manta 6 with the
little angle bracket:
http://www.metzcommunication.com/manta6.htm
It requires no ground or ground plane. You can talk 15 miles holding it
in your hand and it's a perfect match. It's 34" long, a 1/2 wave, end-
fed. If you ever destroy it, I don't want to go boating with you. One
was mounted by an existing bolt under a holddown handle on my jetboat
near the bow and flogged to death for years with no failures, at all.
It's warranteed for life! The CG has them on all their boats.

Just cut the cable as close to the old antenna base as you can get and
put a PL-259 male UHF connector on it. The Metz has the mating stainless
SO-239 UHF female connector on the bottom of it. Use a piece of shrink
tubing filled with RTV to seal it from the sea to cover both connectors
for life. Metz never rusts.

A better way to mount it, as it requires no groundplane, is to drill a
3/4" hole on top of some horizontal surface and simply bolt the Metz to
it, as high as possible. The connectors will be inside the boat, out of
the weather. So small, you'll hardly notice it's there. It doesn't
require tilting if you trailer, which is wonderful.

At the same height with 25W applied, we've never been able to tell any
difference in its range to the horizon between this and the big, tall,
so-called "high gain" fiberglass whips 6' long. The horizon is the
horizon on VHF radio. Only ALTITUDE makes that horizon further out.

Don't forget to tighten the whip nut as you complete installation because
you'll lose the whip if you don't.

Larry
--
Warning - South Carolina's sales tax went up ANOTHER 1% today,
so that rich people with big houses could get reduced taxes.