On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:18:16 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
wrote:

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:40:58 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message
...
John H. wrote in
:

Another question: Most antennae seem to come with about 20 feet of
wire. Mounted on a console with the radio right there, I could get by
with about 3 feet of wire. Is all the extra wire necessary?


No, it's not. If you're not a solderer, find someone who can put a new
connector on the radio end of your cable or make up a new cable. The Metz
does NOT have a cable attached to it....one of its great features. YOU
put
the cable on it so the cable can be replaced....not hard wired into the
plastic, like the little whips from Shakespeare come.

The farce of "tuning" the antenna with cable length is nonsense....
True, you don't "tune" the antenna with cable length, but you need a certain
amount of it to properly tune the antenna. My memory is rusty and I'd have
to go dig out the books, but I think you should have a 1/2 wavelength or so
in cable length. Maybe it's a 1/4 .... can't remember. Too short will
cause the antenna not to load properly (assuming it is the correct length)
and result in an excessive SWR value that reduces effective transmitted
power and, in the worst situation, cause damage to the output stage of the
radio.

If you have matching problems with the antenna and are fairly certain
that the antenna, connectors are known good and the radio is
presenting power properly, then the suspect is the length of the
feedline.

End result - you trim the feeline to bring the antenna to the correct
match. Thus you are tuning the antenna using the feedline.

That's why God invented antenna tuners. :)

That is the beauty of rec.boats, even when you think every possible
boating discussion has been beat to death, a new informative topic will
arise, that we can learn from.

Of course, we will beat this one to death.



Well, it's not beat to death yet. I'm getting conflicting views on this
antenna cable length. I really don't like having 20' of cable coiled up in
the console. There's not much space there already.

But, I'll do what I have to do.