[Elecraft] Insulated Backstay

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Don's idea for a loop with the backstay attached to the mast is GREAT! One
thing that anyone who hasn't been around the ocean fails to really
appreciate is just how H-A-R-D it is to keep insulators clean. There's a
reason the big ships use humungous glass insulators everywhere, and even
though they are usually way above the water line they salt up and turn into
resistors almost overnight! 

The horror stories of trying to those babies clean are all true. Salt can be
tenacious stuff and it collects faster than bills on vacation. 

Any system that avoids the need to have insulator(s) in hard-to-reach places
(like the top of the backstay) is worth considering. 

I bet the op who said a loop is a "short" is from the same school that told
me that a linearly-loaded vertical using a helical element can't work
because it's a huge "RF Choke"! 

Ron AC7AC

-----Original Message-----
...actually the BEST antenna was to only insulate the bottom of the backstay
and load the whole rig, AS DISCUSSED in the current editions of the ARRL
Antenna Book. But I got tired of arguing with people that this would
actually work - "But it is a short!" - as I was advocating it long before
the Antenna Book, and gave up. And - in some cases it didn't work very well
- on a ketch rig or with a "split" backstay. On a sloop, with a single wire
from the mast to the stern - it is killer. In a lot of cases, we simply ran
a 6 gauge wire back from the base of the mast or the forestay to the ground
of the tuner and jumpered all the fitting toggles with wire for good
continuity - forming a big "loop". The one insulator was because without it,
there would be a lot of leakage from the chainplate at the feed point to
ground after the stern gets coated with salt spray (but some installations
worked OK without it anyway - Brian may recall Bill Parks' Islander 36 Stray
Cat Blues about 2 or 3 races ago and his effort before that - Bill
introduced the idea to me when he was interviewing me for an article in
Latitude 38. It was in a book that was published some years ago on Ham Radio
and Cruising and the author discussed not using insulators - at first I too
said it wouldn't work - then I thought about it for a while).
...I am not saying other methods WON'T work - just that it is difficult to
predict the results and it can be a tremendous amount of work and expense
with poor results. One thing that has been determined is SOME sort of direct
sea-water contact is needed.

Don Melcher
W6CZ
HF Radio On Board
www.hfradio.com