"Steve Lusardi" wrote in news:fk6u0f$31h$01
:

Perhaps an antenna switch and a common antenna, as I will never use
more than one radio at a time.


The only reason for two radios would be redundancy. If this is what
you are looking for, forget antenna switching as you are more likely
to lose the antenna than the radio. I'm for dumping one radio,
probably the Sea, but your choice as I don't know what their
individual conditions are.

Backstays are better antennas than whips because of their length.
Boaters on HF use the lower, shorter ranged frequencies, like 4, 6
and 8 Mhz. So, the longer the antenna, the better the radiation. On
the steel boat, I'm sure your backstay is grounded, unlike the
plastic boats, so we're going to need insulators top and bottom
wherever the backstay (or its jacks) meets the boat. Congratulations
on your most enviable ground, that steel hull. Plastic boaters will
all have lots less signal strength than you. Simply ground the
tuner's ground screw to the hull with a very short, straight heavy
wire. We have an HF ham station, WA4USN, aboard the WW2 aircraft
carrier, Yorktown (CV-10), a museum here. "World's Largest Ground
Plane" hooked to the Atlantic Ocean. Amazing signals worldwide.

If you decide to go with the whip, put the tuner as close to the base
of it as you can get. Make sure the whip ISN'T NEAR ANY METAL like
boom lifts, as much as practical. Any parallel rigging near it just
sucks the signal right off to ground, which does you no good.

Larry
--
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
"I have been to several major Chinese cities and have seen first hand
shops crammed with obviously fake American products." - Jon Dudas,
Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Rights.

How can they be fake? The Chinese make all "American Products" I
use!