Using SSB While On Hard

[cburger]

Originally Posted by Poeme

I see your "ultimate plan" is to replace the KISS with copper strapping to a bronze thruhull. Just want to say, I think that's a great idea. This past spring I did exactly that and my signal improved 1000%.

This is interesting to hear I have bronze thru hulls close to tuner, how did you attach?

[Pizzazz]

At sea, we use seawater for ground and a near vertical antenna. It works moderately well, mostly because seawater is such a good conductor.

On land, it is silly to use a vertical antenna or dipole... it is too noisy, especially in a boat yard with other masts around you. Your best bet is to install a horizontal dipole antenna. This means, you need to longish horizontal wires coming off your autotuner. The wires you can easily run from your boat to the neighboring boats. The longer the better. You connect one wire to the antenna output of the tuner, the oher to the ground output of the tuner. Then you hoist the tuner up your mast, so hat the dipoles are opposite each other and roughly horizontal. This setup will be approx. 10x better than a vertical antenna of any kond in a boat yard. You need to run a coax cable from the tuner to the SSB of course.

Or you can buy a Yagi with a rotor and mount it on he mast of the boat. That would be even better.

[cburger]

I disconnected the KISS and ran a 10 gauge stranded wire off the boat and buried approximately 16 foot length. The radio tuned up almost imediately however stiil not making any contacts on 20 meters, think the band was pretty bad today.

[S/V Illusion]

Originally Posted by cburger

I disconnected the KISS and ran a 10 gauge stranded wire off the boat and buried approximately 16 foot length. The radio tuned up almost imediately however stiil not making any contacts on 20 meters, think the band was pretty bad today.

One radial doesn’t make an effective counterpoise.

[SoonerSailor]

Originally Posted by cburger

I disconnected the KISS and ran a 10 gauge stranded wire off the boat and buried approximately 16 foot length. The radio tuned up almost imediately however stiil not making any contacts on 20 meters, think the band was pretty bad today.

If running just one counterpoise/radial off the boat, try not burying it. If kept off the ground, a single radial will be more effective, and work in a fashion closer to a dipole. Worth a shot, anyway.

[HT32BSX115]

Originally Posted by cburger

I disconnected the KISS and ran a 10 gauge stranded wire off the boat and buried approximately 16 foot length. The radio tuned up almost imediately however stiil not making any contacts on 20 meters, think the band was pretty bad today.

Howdy,

I used an end fed wire at my home station for nearly 20 years with only 1 300ft long wire on the ground underneath (buried) . I experimented with 200-300ft length strung between two trees.

My coupler was the familiar SGC-235 and it worked equally well using the ICOM AT-140 and MFJ 998RT.

It didn't matter which radio was connected.

(I used everything from vintage vacuum tube amateur radio stuff to an ICOM IC-M802, Raytheon RAY152, Vertex Standard VX-1700, Motorola MICOM 3T etc.....Even an EF Johnson Viking Valiant....for you real vintage people)

The end fed wire tuners "tuned" the 200ft wire everywhere. 1.8-29MHz

The largest performance increase was when I added "radials".

I used some old CATV coaxial cable (RG-6) as radials adding 5 pieces 135ft long just laying on the ground and observed the largest increase in performance. (I was trying to maximize performance on 3.5-4 MHz) but it improved 1.8-14MHz. I didn't try it higher since those bands were usually "dead"

It will work with one wire on the ground but the performance does suffer.

If you have something to connect the other end to, and all you want to do is work 20m, just cut a 20m dipole (approx 33ft long) , center feed it with RG-8X (or equiv) coax, and connect it to the back of the radio. (no coupler) run one end up the main mast and tie the other to something as high as you can get it (sloping dipoles usually work "ok") And call it good.


Cheers,

Rick