The KISS SSB Counterpoise - Revealed ( with Pics )

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Goudurix

Glenn,

I would suggest - if you haven't got that already - to take the exam for the basic Ham license in the US.
This way you can also work on the (far more extended) HAM bands.

With the same equipment - if you have a marine HF-ssb transceiver, you are allowed to use it also on the hAM bands if licensed. Not the other way around...

Jan
ON3ZTT

A small clarification:

The U.S. "basic" ham license -- Technician Class -- does not give you any phone (voice) privileges on HF, so that won't be of any help operating a marine SSB radio on ham bands.

For HF, you need the General Class license.

And if you plan to operate outside of US waters, you will want the Extra Class license -- which is recognized for automatic reciprocity in CEPT countries (most of the world except the U.S.)


I passed all three exams in one sitting last year -- Technician, General, and Extra -- after a very intense long weekend (day and night) of study. The Technician and General exams are fairly straightforward and shouldn't present any big problems for any person of reasonable intelligence and even a little time for study. The Extra Class exam was very hard, at least it was for me, with no technical or math background (I'm a lawyer).

[AfterHoursNLCT]

Technician Class operator gives you HF privileges on 10 Meters.
From ARRL website:
10 Meters

Novice and Technician classes:
28.000-28.300 MHz: CW, RTTY/Data--Maximum power 200 watts PEP
28.300-28.500 MHz: CW, Phone--Maximum power 200 watts PEP

LL

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

A small clarification:




any person of reasonable intelligence (I'm a lawyer).

oxymoron her?

Sorry Dockhead - lawyer joke - my sarcastic streak got the better of me - no offense intended

[Goudurix]

Hi Dockhead,

well over here we have some sort of Technical/general class that allows voice on HF-SSB, it was limited to 10 Watts but extended last year to 50W on HF bands because of the reality of transceivers on the market today. Unfortunately with the power extension the range of HF requencies was reduced (except on WARC bands and 10m) to keep the Extra class licensees happy.

I wish one weekend or 48 hrs of study would be enough for me to pass the CEPT-approved extra class license over here in Belgium....it needs several weeks of study but then again aybe my intelligence is under level
I need to pass it since I want to take my HAM ssb across borders both in /MM my sailing boat or /M.

Jan
ON3ZTT

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Goudurix

Hi Dockhead,

well over here we have some sort of Technical/general class that allows voice on HF-SSB, it was limited to 10 Watts but extended last year to 50W on HF bands because of the reality of transceivers on the market today. Unfortunately with the power extension the range of HF requencies was reduced (except on WARC bands and 10m) to keep the Extra class licensees happy.

I wish one weekend or 48 hrs of study would be enough for me to pass the CEPT-approved extra class license over here in Belgium....it needs several weeks of study but then again aybe my intelligence is under level
I need to pass it since I want to take my HAM ssb across borders both in /MM my sailing boat or /M.

Jan
ON3ZTT

I didn't think you had any Extra class licenses in CEPT countries like Belgium? Just "Novice" and "Full"?

CEPT doesn't think much of U.S. ham licenses -- our Technician Class is not recognized by CEPT at all, and the U.S. General Class license is considered to be the equivalent of the CEPT Novice class. Only U.S. Extra Class licenses are considered to be equivalent to the CEPT Full license. This can be a rude shock to U.S. General Class licensees, who have full privileges in the U.S. -- to discover that they are only considered to be "Novices" in Europe.

If I am not mistaken, your CEPT Full license will let you operate in any other CEPT country without any restrictions, and you don't need any other permits to cross borders or operate /MM or /M. So if you can operate HF in Belgium, you should be able to operate on the same bands and power settings in any CEPT country, subject to minor local variations.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by carstenb

oxymoron her?

Sorry Dockhead - lawyer joke - my sarcastic streak got the better of me - no offense intended

No offense taken

And I bet I know more lawyer jokes than you do . . .

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by AfterHoursNLCT

Technician Class operator gives you HF privileges on 10 Meters.
From ARRL website:
10 Meters

Novice and Technician classes:
28.000-28.300 MHz: CW, RTTY/Data--Maximum power 200 watts PEP
28.300-28.500 MHz: CW, Phone--Maximum power 200 watts PEP

LL

Thanks for the correction!

You are right -- Technicians can use a tiny bit (200 kilohertz) of the 10 meter spectrum, for SSB phone only (no other phone modes). This is the band right next to CB radio (which is also HF: 26.9 to 27.4 MHz), except CB radio operators get 500 kilohertz of spectrum.

[Glenn.Brooks]

Hi Jan, great idea to sit for a Ham License. I will look into it. Been looking for something to occupy my winter now that I have decided to retire (for the third time). Always wanted to learn about amateur radio. My Dad was a Ham in the late 1930's in Bellingham, Washington (northern end of Puget Sound), and enlisted as a radioman in the US navy reserve following high school in 1940- then was assigned to the USS Enterprise stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7 and served as chief petty officer in charge of the radio room on board ship, latter on the admiral's staff throughout the Pacific through end of 1945. He was the first guy on the beach at Guadalcanal- went in as a petty officer in charge of a detail with two or three other RAdiomen on a rubber raft in the night, the day before the invasion to set up a radio beacon on a beached Japanese destroyer to guide the landing craft into the assault zone. He only talked about it once or twice, but my mother filled us kids in on the details. Anyway, I banged my head against the licensing and tech requirements many times as a teenager but never really understood all the jargon, so was never licensed. Always wanted to, so maybe nows the time! Thanks for the suggestion!!

[Argyle38]

Originally Posted by svclanguage

Use copper foil 1' wide or wider for counterpoise connections where possible , for connection where space is too tight or where you need flexibility like rubber post, you can bridge the foil with 10g minimizing the length of the 10g. Reason for the flat (foil) conductor if the RF current is limit to the surface of the conductor and flat has more surface area. In most sail boats with backstay antenna rudder post is good choice as it is close to tuner. Adding other stuff like keel will help. On the run to the keel good Idea to branch off to transceiver so you can connect it to RF ground.

Here is info on counter poise if you are interested.

... [snip]

Wow, thank you for thorough but concise explanation. My guess is that this is so confusing to so many because it's not a "this will work, that will not" kind of thing but something much more complicated than that. I seem to be on the list of several folks that will be installing an 802 this spring. My plan is to run copper to my water tanks (2x 45 gallon in bilge, stainless) but my estimate is that they are only about 50 - 60 sq. ft. of surface area so should probably include the rudder post, engine (which is also DC ground), fuel tank and maybe a lag bolt in to my encapsulated lead keel. I have a few questions (to whomever is knowledgeable) about some things.

1. Would you have any reservations in using a diesel fuel tank as a cp in a direct DC connection, or would you DC isolate the line to the tank with a cap.

2. Does copper braid work or does everyone always use copper strap. Seems like braid will still have a lot of surface area (and to HF, will still 'look' like strap) but will be a lot easier to run.

3. Regarding isolating with a capacitor, can someone describe what a good installation would look like. I know someone could simply solder the leads of a through hole cap to two ends of your strap, but I don't think that would be very robust. I like to at least attempt to have my electronics pass the 'look test' and be as robust as possible. Do folks get a piece of perf board solder the caps to that, then maybe put the assembly into a small project box? I'm just curious on how others have tackled this problem. What would a good professional installation look like?

Fun stuff. I've actually been looking forward to installing and operating an HF/SSB in my boat since I started reading about this stuff ~10 years ago.

Thanks,

Argyle

[senormechanico]

There was a photo here somewhere, but it consisted of a bunch of disc capacitors forming a parallel line between the ends of two strips of foil.


________________________________caps __________________________

________________________________|-//-|_________________________

After trying to edit a bunch of times, it probably would have been easier for me to just physically BUILD and photograph a sample!!

[transmitterdan]

Here's one pic.

http://content.westmarine.com/wm-img...rounding-4.jpg

[Argyle38]

Thanks for the pics with the capacitors. I guess that's the most straight forward way of doing it.

I seem to have killed the thread by asking my other questions. Sorry about that, not my intent. Were they inappropriate questions to ask?

[socaldmax]

No, you didn't kill it. Your questions were very closely related to the topic. Perhaps someone will come along and answer the rest of your questions soon. I don't have any experience in grounding HF antennas, or I'd try to help out.

[plebian99]

And how can you measure the difference between a good ground and a bad ground? You dont have a calibrated S_meter nor is your receiver input guaranteed to be 50 ohms with no reactance. Mexico into the USA is short skip with very high strength signals. Even if you were using the lowest power and worst antenna in the world you will easily get back into the USA. If you disconnected the KISS ground and your tuner tunes, and you dont have any RF feedback,you will still make contacts. Hams and many sailors just dont get what a counterpoise or RF ground is supposed to do especially when you have seawater under your radio installation. The loss is so low over seawater that you could afford to have the worst possible ground in the world. Its then no surprise that anybody can claim this and that works. Making contacts does not prove that a ground is good or bad. Hams and RF ground experts like taking credit for what nature is doing and like taking all the kudos for their so called expert rf ground expertise which in reality is nature covering up the sins of their stupidity. The KISS is a 15ft piece of expensive wire that cannot work as advertised. Its just piece of wire acting as a crap counterpoise. If you used a 15ft of gold plated foil it work exactly the same. If you used a piece of 18 gauge fine wire it would work exactly the same. If anyone thinks the KISS can boost your signal over some other equivalent length of wire they really should get off the crack. The KISS appeals to the lazy in all of us. Ah, I can buy it in a packet it must be good. Tick I feel good I have a RF ground from the packet! Installers love it because they sell SSB radios and make SSB radio look like a plug and play installation like their computer systems. Again until the SSB RF ground experts ask themselves what they are trying to achieve, fix or combat all these debates are self serving hyperbola that is mostly a bunch of crap. All these weird answers and ground solutions when examined from a engineering point of view is nothing more than voodoo recipes. Yes, yes, And yes you do need a RF ground. But to what size that should be or what the ground should be to be effective on all marine bands, none of the experts here really know. All the old rule of thumbs regarding grounds and sqft is really bunch of crap that has no basis in science. From this perspective the KISS or a gold plated golf ball are just as legitimate as each other as a RF ground because nobody here really seems to understand the crux of the matter. The crux of the matter is what exactly the ground loss actually is, and how do you go about fixing this loss. If there is no ground loss, then all we are then talking about is providing a counterpoise, and this counterpoise when installed over seawater could be a metal jerry can or a bunch of wires stuffed down a garden hose.When you understand this essential point you can then be a real expert and make claims to the efficacy of your RF ground solution be it a KISS or hand forged copper foil. Until someone produces numbers any piece metal regardless of size connected to the grounding lug of the tuner will work because seawater is the equivalent of gods liquid copper under our vessels. I guess some experts conveniently ignore this fact of nature. But hey if it makes you feel better and it sells wires stuffed down the tube its OK its good for the economy and peoples poor technical sensibilities. While the KISS might seem technically flawed by the way it is constructed and how its supposed to work. It is a RF counterpoise and it should work as well as any piece of 15 ft wire. The technical claims of how it works as explained is a bunch technical mumbo jumbo of crap. It does not mean that KISS wont work or is a fraudulent product. It simply means that the KISS is legitimate as any RF ground recipe mentioned here because nobody else can quantify the exact ground loss nor can KISS quantify the ground loss it can combat. Amongst real technical hams and engineers this loss is very well understood. This knowledge is conveniently ignored by sailors and all the associated sailing SSB experts. They would not repeat the crap that they spew out here in any ham peer review forum. How much the ground loss is reduced by using the KISS or any other RF ground is the problem not kind of wire or copper foil you use. We just had another post telling people not to use round wires. Where do people get this kind of crap from? Nor can the acres of copper experts tell you how much your investment in kilos of copper is going to buy for your signal. In this matter for all intensive purposes all forms of RF grounds/counterpoises and any bit of metal could be considered equal or a draw. They all provide some kind of counterpoise. Life is too short becoming immersed into these nonsensical debates. When some RF engineer produces the numbers for ground loss and then does an analysis of whether the antenna is voltage or current fed we might starting making sense of all these debates and what ground has a real advantage in the real world. Nobody has provided this answer in any sailing forum and I have been following these debates for more than 10 years. I am sure we will be here in another 10 years time and there will be another 10 years of claims what stations sailors worked and there will be a new round of google SSB experts suggesting new ground recipes 1+1=2 A rfground or counterpoise is supposes to provide a return path for the antenna to work and or combat ground loss. Who knows what the ground loss figure is and how many ohms will your ground system reduce this loss by? EXPERTS?

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

After 3 yrs as a SSB Radio net controler in Mexico (Amigo and Southbound Nets)...the KISS works just as well as other systems on boats I've spoken to and taken thousands of their check-ins.

[Goudurix]

Well you surely got that off your chest, Plebeian99!

Since I don't know how to measure my ground loss, I simply try to apply some known and low cost solutions:
- short stretch of copper tape to un underwater bronze
- 2 sets of bundled cut radials (for 40-20-17-15m) running along the inside of the toerail both sides
- tied in the lifelines and pushpit.

Easy, low cost, it works (the tuner tunes and I can make DX connections).


Jan