Buy 100' of #12 flexible stranded copper wire that's plastic insulated
and the brightest color you can find, like yellow or orange. You only
need ONE conductor. Dip one end of it in 3M 5200 sealant to keep
water out of that end of it and let it harden a couple of days. Strip
off the other end and crimp on an eyelet (not a spade!) big enough to
hook directly to the tuner's ground connection. On the open end, tie
the wire to plastic cup that makes a little sea anchor to drag it out
the back of the boat and keep tension on it. A cheap hose winder
makes a great place to store your "trailing ground wire" when you're
not at sea. Plastic ones don't corrode.

When you get out to sea, merely trail your 100' section of ground out
the stern from the antenna tuner as directly as possible with enough
drag to keep it underwater but not skipping across the top. The cup
keeps pulling it out straight. You'll be amazed how great it works
ESPECIALLY if your insulated backstay antenna is NOT close to METAL
WIRES like the boom topping lift, especially near the top insulator
where the impedance is maximum on any band....sucking off your signal
to the mast.

DON'T FORGET TO REEL IN YOUR GROUND WIRE BEFORE YOU DO DRASTIC COURSE
CHANGES, COME ABOUT OR GO INTO A HARBOR AND BACK OVER IT!.....(c;

I had 50' trailed out in the tide right at the marina dock and worked
Russia on 14.206 Mhz in the 20M ham band to Odessa....(c; Works just
fine. LONGER IS BETTER!...always.

You should see the one trailing out behind a nuclear submarine
SUBMERGED. They use it for an antenna, not ground. The boat is a
good ground, there.



On 15 Sep 2003 08:48:23 -0700, (Allan) wrote:

I've been trying to unravel the mysteries of SSB grounding in yachts
and found some information about using resonant ground wires in an old
discussion group archive. I would like to try this antenna grounding
setup, rather than try to coat the inside of my boat with copper foil
etc, but have a couple of questions.

At the moment I have a 23ft whip antenna on my boat linked to an ICOM
140 tuner and then copper strap to a copper plate on the outside of
the hull, but I don't think the performance is very good.

From my reading it looks like I need to run two ground wires for each
of the frequencies from the tuner:
Freq Length ft
2mhz 62 (instead of 117ft)
4 59
6 39
8 29
12 20
16 15
18 13
22 11
25 9

My boat is a catamaran. I have wiring conduits that run about 23ft on
either hull and then across the hulls, front and back about 14ft long.
Would it be ok to run these wires in the conduits or do they need to
be "spaced out" in the boat. If I can use the conduits I thought about
running one set clockwise round the boat and the other anti clockwise
- there will be some overlap on the longer ones - would this pose any
problems ?

Thanks
Allan


Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?