[Elecraft] K3 on motorboat.

[Robert Sands]

Verticals require more attention to ground but the goal should be to
increase the antenna current, thus increasing radiated signal. ground into
water seems like a waste but has DC grounding value. I use hung vertical
dipoles (20 and 15) with no need for ground and they work amazingly well. I
have tried letting wire or zinc ribbon  strips drop into saltwater to
ground verticals and there is no value I can detect over something simpler,
like tying to existing structures or running a above water wire
counterpoise. Vertical dipoles require no Rf ground and propagate at low
angle and high efficiency. Far effects over water are what counts, more
than grounding, except in verticals to get higher antenna current.
K7VO

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:38 AM Frank C Richards <prpntfmr at gmail.com> wrote:

>  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.
> .
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