[Elecraft] K3 on motorboat.

[Frank C Richards]

 Having been in the marine electronics business I was able to successfully
install many HF radios on boats from large steel commercial fishing boats
to a small 28 ft fiberglass fishing boat and sailboats.
 Anything metal , engine, fuel tanks,rudder posts,thru hulls, morse control
cables,intercoolers outside of the hull,rub rail sections jumpered together
to form one continuous loop. Dynaplates help but will not work well as the
only source of ground. I once saw a carbon brush riding thru spring tension
on a prop shaft, tying the prop to ground.
 It can be tricky as sometimes you get ground loops and you must be aware
of currents that can cause electrolysis.
 For the antenna we primarily used a 23 ft whip, sometimes on large vessels
a longwire.
 This was before synthesized radios and autouners. My favorite radio was the
Drake TRM which had a built in manual tuner and a 50 ohm output if you
wanted
to use a trapped vertical.
 On  commercial fishing boats you had to leave the dock so that the
outriggers
could be lowered and trawl doors put in the water as this changed the tuning
quite a bit from being at the dock. Interestingly enough I think the
toughest
time I had tuning  was on an 85 ft steel shrimp boat even with all that
metal.
.