It's already "insulated" at both ends. If the wood were BONE DRY,
that would be fine. But, alas, it's not. It'll work, though, just
the way it is.

You'll need a good automatic tuner to go with your new SSB. I've just
installed the Icom M802 HF SSB and Icom AT-140 automatic antenna tuner
aboard an Amel Sharpi ketch with insulated backstay on the mainmast
which comes back to the bottom of the mizzenmast, but isn't grounded,
simply bolted into the fiberglass. The AT-140 is grounded to the base
of the mizzenmast which has a strap to the engine straight under it.
The circuit is complete to the ocean at about 2.2 ohms, measured to an
independently connected grounding block under the hull.

The backstay and tuner work amazingly well, considering the K index is
high making HF radio quite useless. I've gotten fair signals from
Charleston SC to the midwest and west on the 20 meter ham band in the
daytime. We haven't had it out to sea at night, yet, which will be
much better on a lower freq. This tuner will tune a 55' backstay down
to 1.6 Mhz quite easily all the way up to 30 Mhz. I can't wait for a
winter evening on the 160 Meter ham band (1.8-2.0 Mhz).

Trying to communicate from our marina is useless. There's so much
electrical noise coming from every corroded high voltage insulator
under the dock it just blocks out all signals on all frequencies, even
though the main power transformer on the dock is 3 docks away.

The Icom works very well, in spite of some stupid, cheap connectors
they used. The control connector on the antenna tuner was removed and
my shielded control cable hard soldered inside the tuner's watertight
enclosure where the cheapskates left out the terminal block to save 50
cents/unit. I don't think Icom ever owned a boat in seawater, hard as
that is to believe from Japan, a sea country. Many stupid decisions
were made in its hardware design.....like drawing salt air into the
cabinet to cool the internal heat sink that should be OUTSIDE the
SEALED transceiver. Idiots.....others are worse, though....

Larry W4CSC/MM
S/V "Lionheart"
Charleston SC


On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 18:20:10 -0700, "David Wells"
wrote:

Anyone have any advice on using an uninsulated stay? It is attached to wood
at each end. Thanks.

Dave






Larry W4CSC

Maybe we could get the power grid fixed if every politician
regulating the power companies wasn't on their payrolls.