I can see plenty of places to mount a VHF radio antenna. Mainly the highest location , but I was curious if anybody has placed an HF radio Antenna on either the vacationer ot weekender?
I was thinking maybe a 20 meter wire antenna.
I'm only curious because I would love to have my Amateur radio on the boat with me once I get to start building her.
My neighbor in Ohio (exta class ticket) and I tried to come up with ideas for that as well. I suppose you could try an inverted V running from the bow sprit to the mast top and back down to the stern. The problem is that I don't think that would be long enough to put out a good signal on 20m, especially with a QRP rig.
I think a better solution would be a large kite holding up a long wire attached to a antenna tuner. That would get you the lenght needed for HF.
-73's
By my calculations the inverted v would only have to have a length of 33 or so feet. It would probably help me in my calculations if I knew about how tall the hast on a vacationer would be. I could always go to 15 or 10 meters for HF communication also.those lengths for a dipole are 22 feet and right around 16.5" give or take.
I built my vacationer with a 5 foot tabernacle, and 16 foot mast for a total of 21 feet. I wonder if you could run the wire from the bowsprit long your forestay, over the top of the mast, and down the topping rig to the aft end of the boom. Or up to the tip of the gaff.
I'm familiar with HF, mounted on aircraft, and one should not be too close to the wire during TX. That may be a factor for you.
I've got a 6 foot fibreglass antenna on my mast top, it gives me great range on the VHF. With the repeater sites on the big lake, I have continuous coverage. Only thing that would be better for me, would be a Sat phone. But alas the budget will not permit it.
Good luck with you project Lee.
Greg
Thank yopu, I was doing some searches for Marine Radio's and I found one that interests me, it is an Icom (can't remenber the model numbers) anyway it is a SSB radio, and there is also a VHF radio that matches. anyway, on the same site there is an antenna tuner that says it will tune a 21 Ft wire antenns that comes with the tuner. Looks to me like I could either do that as a sloper, or just run it straight up the mast as a verticle, and it should be ok, though it might couple with any conductive materials running up the mast as well.
I won't get to actually start on the boat till after I goto and come back from Iraq, so I have plenty of time to ponder. Thanks for the tips
By the way both tghe SSB and the VHF radios tune in both Marine, and amature frequencies so I figured it was a prettyy good deal even though right now I don't recall the prices I thing like $300-400 for the VHF, and $1300-1500 for the SSB
OK Greg, from the top of your 21' mast to the end of your bow spirit, how long are we looking at? Or I could do the math if I knew the measurement from say the base of your mast to the end of the bow spirit. Not that I'm great at math
Hi Lee:
We might have to resort to the math work as my boat is tarped and put into hibernation for the long northern winter. My plans are in the garage (opps boatshed), probably buried under my snowmobile manuals right now. I'll try to find them and figure the best way to route the wire.
The dimensions between bowsprit, mast and aft end of the boom, are stock. I only raised the tabernacle height to 5 feet. I can dig my roller furling jib out of storage later this week and measure it's length for reference. Maybe one of the southern folks can measure their boat.
Greg
I know how that is with the Northern winters
I'm hoping that by the time I finish, I'll be in California myself