Garland,

Recent wisdom in this always controvercial topic is to use foil to
connect the tuner/radio to a through-hull. I have mine wrapped around
a scupper seacock and held with a hose clamp. Works as good as
any installation I have encountered that has extensive foil layed down
including my previous boat. Try this simple approach first, then if it
doesn't work well start laying down foil etc. All boats are different.
What works great on my boat may not work well on yours.
Doug, k3qt
s/v Callista

"Garland Gray II" wrote in message
news:B5nAb.37355$_h.35620@lakeread02...
I'm about to install the SSB ground system in my catamaran. Since I don't
have a lead keel, and my water tank is well above the w/l, seems I might
be
needing to lay down a lot of copper strips in the bilge.
The operators manual suggested that a 3" strip separated 3" from an
adjacent
3" strip would be equivalent to a 9" strip. Is this the maximum separation
to achieve this phenomonem? If the strips could be 2 feet apart, and still
be effective as a 2+ foot wide strip, that would save a lot of time and
materials. Probably too good to be true though. But if it did wow, maybe I
could lay strips in both hulls, connected together at each end, and have a
monster ground plane.
Since this probably wouldn't work, what is the most efficient way to make
the ground system in a catamaran?