I am the one who posted that idea. I implemented it and used the setup on a
recent Mexico trip. I am a newbie in this arena, so I can only tell you that
my rig was probably the best in the fleet of several boats. On the subject
of antenna feed wire, I found an old reference on this NG recommending
stripping the braid from coax(RG-8 is what I used) as a substitute for
GTO-15. I was unable to locate a local source for GTO-15, so I went with
the stripped coax. I was unable to do a good job on standoffs for the coax
because of the hydraulics, but it didn't seem to matter a great deal.

I did not think to do a helical wrap of the antenna wire which incidentally
was just standard insulated #16 Ancor about 45' in length. On larger boats,
the antenna wire is buried beneath the UV shield; on mine the wire was taped
to the exterior of the UV shield.

A lot of racing sailboats are switching their rod or wire backstays to
Aramid at this time. The weight savings is dramatic, and the cost is
roughly half of what a backstay with insulators would cost.

I liked the idea, I saw here a while back, of using the new Kevlar based
Backstay material, and not worring about having to ground or not. Seemed
like the logical answer to me. Then just helical wrap the antenna wire
around the Kevlar Backstay and have a really nice "Fully Loaded Antenna
with alot of electrical length........


Bruce in alaska
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