what free standing SSB antenna for catamaran?

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

I have on occasion seen a sailboat with the whip on the transom. It looks wildly out of place for sure. It has to be braced with some " legs" which ads to the clutter back there.

I did come across a boat, that used a "portable" long wire. He had the tuner under a cockpit seat, and would haul the long wire up with a spare halyard. I was told it worked, but can't give more details as I don't know how well this worked.

With Satphones, wi-fi, computers, etc, you don't see many boats equipped with Ham radio anymore. It appears Ham will go the way of the dodo bird one day.

Indeed, HF is falling out of favour, without a doubt. But, until I can send a mayday or PanPan to the world within helping distance, through a sat phone, I'll stick to it. I also enjoy hearing on the nets about who's close to me, or nearby, even if that's 400 miles away. We can set up a meeting place to meet friends, somewhere in the middle.

I don't think I want to watch Marinetraffic to know where my friends are, and I sometimes shut down our AIS for privacy too. I think we're both old enough to remember what that word means.

I'm not a fan of setting up the radio, or antenna, everytime I want to join a net. I met a fellow who did the same thing as your friend, and set up the antenna everytime he wanted to use the radio. I'm far too lazy for that!

I suppose one benefit of having an ssb radio, is that anyone I talk to on it, will be of a similar "vintage" as me.

Cheers.
Paul.

[MicHughV]

Yep, it's a problem. While I'm well versed in the art of SSB and Ham, modern boat communications leaves me somewhat in the dark.

Like it or not, I will have to "learn" yet another skill.

I told you about my girlfriends' dad...he was a whizz with morse code...he had a shed back out behind house with all his radio gear and most of his "chats" was using morse code. He was very old school, built most of his own equipment, etc.

After a while, hanging out with him, I became pretty good at listening to it...it's like a language....you don't count the dots and dashes, but start to recognize the "sounds" of a letter and words. It's a lot easier to learn at high speed, I found out. Listening to code was one thing, but sending it was another....he could send at blistering speed and never wrote anything down....he was simply " talking" in code..I never mastered the sending part.....just gave up. He's gone now, but he was a master at the game. Most of his old buddies are also gone now. It's a shame, that code is no longer a requirement.

Sign of the time I guess.

I have friends that are a whizz with a computer, but alas, I'm not one of them.

[Brian.D]

Speaking of sending and receiving at blistering speeds, the Marconi operators would send at 40WPM. Mostly abbreviated or CW shorthand, but still, 40WPM. Dang!

[GRIT]

That's a great memory Hugh. Not many have had the pleasure of witnessing folks sending code like they were talking.

I've not had the pleasure myself, but my dad used to work on ASW aircraft, back in the 1970's, back when morse was used to talk back and forth to base, from "afar". He was very good at it; though I only got to hear him a couple of times, showing me a sample of what he had to do, and listen to. My mom was also pretty good at morse, having helped my dad study it back in the 60's, for his proficiency exams. I got my 5 words a minute for my ham test back in the early 2000's, then promptly forgot how. If you never use it...

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers.
Paul.

[MicHughV]

ya...the interesting part was that many of these old timers had a certain " style" when it came to sending code, you could identify the sender by just listening to the " style"...it was like having an "accent"...hard to describe......for instance instead of hearing "dot dot dah"....you'd hear " dot dot dahhhhhh".....you'd have to be there....everyone had their own peculiarities...at speed you don't hear dot dot dahhhhh.....it's more like dddahhhhh..it becomes a " sound"...these old timers all knew each other...I was quite enthralled by it all.....

modern youngsters have their cell phone "sounds."....rotflmao.....lol......etc......it 's all Greek to me....

[GRIT]

Greek indeed. I don't know any of it, though I suppose I should learn. It all seems so inconsequential to me, though likely not to them.

I've read about that too, the different styles, or accents, of code. It makes sense that there'd be differences, though subtle.


Cheers.
Paul.