I don't care what books you read or who wrote them and why they decide
that the rules of physics changed because he is now being paid by what
company.

The Antenna begins at the tuner
The ground (system) begins at the antenna

Do you want the antenna radiating or the ground radiating?

Do you want the antenna as long as possible? (Look at an
antenna-engineering book to get the formula for antennas, hint: one of
the many factors that are DIRECTLY proportional is the length of
antenna (bet not very many of the non-engineer type antenna experts in
here knew that )) LOL just opened up a can of worms.

You want the ground of a vertical type antenna, sloper counts as that
in my book as it is only ¼ wavelength (not really but that's what the
tuner is for, to lie to the transmission line but really it changes
the feed point reactance, anyway I wasn't an English major and anyway
again you want the ground at the tuner to be an effective counterpoise
by coupling into the seawater without radiating any of that rf. Hot
grounds anyone, that's my story and I'm sticking to it



Gordie can write I can't he better stick to writing maybe some
children's books would be better












Bruce in Alaska wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Mark Reichow) wrote:

A valid point but Gordon West also states that with the modern
couplers/tuners, we no longer need to run huge amounts of ground foil
and to link EVERY thru-hull to have a good ground plane. It used to
be that a MINIMUM of 100 sq. ft. of counterpoise was recommended.
He's a ham who writes books and magazine articles offering advice on
the best way to install your HF radio system. I don't think he'd risk
his rep telling you to install an inferior ground plane just to sell
some foil. And I don't think SGC has a monetary interest in telling
us to mount the coupler as close to the base of the antenna as
practical. In any case, I've istalled my system and others this way,
all with great success. Regards, Mark


Old Gordie, doesn't have a clue about how the firmware in "Modern
Autotuners", works, and shows his ingnorence in his writing such drivel.
The requirement for a "Solid Low Impeadance RF Ground System" doesn't
change just because you have a fancy Autotuner, instead of a clunky
old Fixed Channel Tuner, of years gone by. The only change is that
you, as a Vessel Owner, can do your own installations instead of hiring
a "Competant Marine Radioman" to do a quality job for you. This allows
you to make all the "Stupid and unintellegent" mistakes that folks with
years of experience made back on their first installation. My first
question was ALWAYS, "Do you want it to WORK, or do you want it to LOOK
GOOD?" SGC couldn't design their way out of a "Wet Paper Bag" and they
didn't do any of the "Original Design Work" on any of the Autotuner
Products. ANY THAT IS A FACT! How do you determine "great suscess"?
Like I have posted before, just making a "Radio Contact" when the band
is wide open doesn't prove anything. A "Wet Noodle" will work when the
band is open. We used to do that by calling KMI from Puget Sound all
the time, and "It don't mean Squat" Make a contact when the band is
noisy and marginal, or in the middle of a Big Storm, when your more
likly to really need to communicate, then maybe you got something.
See in the Non-commecial Maritime Radio World, you actually use the HF
Radio very little and actually make contact even less. In the Commercial
Maritime Radio World, these guys are using that radio 4 or more times a
day, every day, and if they don't get a contact, they move frequency
untill they do make contact. When they had Radio Operators, it was
considerable more contact per ship per day than that. If they had
marginal Antenna Systems and RF Grounds, they are back "Bitching" to the
Istalling Radioman, after the first voyage. Been there, had that happen!

Bruce in alaska