bradleyj wrote in
:

I'm
thinking of attaching three stainless guy wires about 4' up from the
base.

Oops....nope. The guy wires must not become part of the radiator, which
wire will do. The guys should be line, not wire. Use the kind of line
you'd see on a sailboat topping lift and you'll do fine. It's good the
line flexes some as the fiberglass whip is designed to flex some and that
takes the stress off everything.

You can make a 3-point metal plate that will slip over the smaller, upper
part of the whip, but with a hole that won't pass the metal part where it
widens, which I think happens two times on this antenna you're
considering. Slip the whip through the hole and let it seat itself down
the mast with further securing. It isn't going anywhere. The small
metal plate is too small to make any big RF statement on HF. This gives
you a tiepoint for the small supporting, INSULATING, line to tie off to
your cabin roof points. The fold-down mount will then be easy. Release
one line, maybe use a clip on it to tie it to the boat and she'll fold
right over for trailering, which I can see makes my previous fixed
suggestion impossible. Bolt the HF antenna tuner to the top of the cabin
right beside the base so the folding doesn't hit it (port or starboard)
and keep the "hot" lead from the tuner to the antenna as short as
possible.

Be sure to ground the tuner's ground lug to a ring terminal bolted to the
cabin roof, as short as possible, with a heavy strap. Coat the
connections with some grease to keep the water away from them and seal it
up. This ground will make the whole boat the ground counterpoise and
turn the plastic blowboat HF users green with envy for your great ground
plane.

Wouldn't two DIESELS be much cheaper and lots more reliable than outboard
gas guzzlers in a commercial operation???