bradleyj wrote:
Boy, I never expected to get so much great advice so fast!! I'm
digesting it all now. I've known since I started looking in to this
that I'd have an awesome ground plane, but I never gave much thought to
problems I'd have mounting the antenna. I'll let you know how I decide
to go. By the way, I tried to post photos of the boat, but this server
kept giving me errors. Here's a web site with a pictu

http://www.specmar.com/boatpics/boatpic55.jpg


Nice boat, but I would not use a deck-mounted whip since it would be
surrounded by metal: not only by the pilothouse, but by the sides as
well! Instead, consider a 16-foot whip mounted on an insulated support
at the level of the gunwhales and supported at the pilothouse roof. With
all the windows in the pilothouse, I wouldn't give losses a second thought.

Good luck.

Chuck

chuck wrote in
ink.net:

Nice boat, but I would not use a deck-mounted whip since it would be
surrounded by metal: not only by the pilothouse, but by the sides as
well! Instead, consider a 16-foot whip mounted on an insulated support
at the level of the gunwhales and supported at the pilothouse roof.
With all the windows in the pilothouse, I wouldn't give losses a
second thought.

Good luck.

Chuck



I'd recommend not putting an HF SSB radio in this little boat at all. Who
are you going to talk to on it? It's not big enough to take to sea for a
cruise, so why would it need SSB capabilities so close to shore?

I doubt you're going to be able to keep an SSB radio working in this wet
environment. WHATEVER you do, don't buy an Icom! Their SSB radios are NOT
sealed up, at all, having many openings that will simply be filled with
spray and destroyed. It isn't going to happen with a radio like M802 or
702 in this boat.

This boat doesn't need SSB. It needs a full-power VHF into a 6 dB folddown
antenna whip.