Maybe you should keep it all. Flip them all on for a few seconds and you could feast on roast cormorant.
I have a B&R rig on my boat there is no backstay. Can’t seem to find anywhere else the SSB AT-140 antenna tuner would connect to. Please excuse my ignorance much of this is new to me.
No problem. It is possible that the SSB antenna will be a 23' vertical. That could be disassembled and stored somewhere. Check you transom for something that might look like a CB mobile antenna mount. But I can tell you on that tower of your there is nothing that looks like it will support a HF antenna, at least that I can see.
Brian, Do you think This piece circled in red could be the base for where the SSB antenna may have been mounted? Or would there have been too much interference from the rest of everything up there for this to be the SSB antenna mount? There is something hanging off there but I can't tell what that is.
dj
That was one of my first thoughts, co-sight interference. And if there are any high power transmitters you'd want to have really good out of band rejection to avoid blowing a neighboring receiver. I'm sure these antennas were mostly pretty far apart in operating frequencies but if there was say an L-band Satcom transmitter that close to a GPS receiver I'd be a bit concerned.
@dLj With SSB the normal antenna would be a modified backstay. Meaning, the backstay would be cut and there would be insulators at the top and bottom of the backstay. The wire lead would be connected to that backstay from the tuner. For Marine SSB (even ham for that matter) the nominal length of the antenna would be 23' or 35'. However, most will use whatever they have available. The length of the antenna starts at the antenna tuner. So if that were the case in the photo, one would be running a very active (when transmitting) current and voltage up along the connect cable. The cable is GTO-15 which will handle 15KV.
Now it is possible that the mount was used for VHF or AIS. The cable wrapped around the base looks like coax. But agree, hard to tell.
Now it is possible that the mount was used for VHF or AIS. The cable wrapped around the base looks like coax. But agree, hard to tell.
Yes indeed. That's how my SSB is run. I've not seen it done any other way actually, the root of my question. But the OP doesn't have a backstay. So I've no idea how you'd run an appropriate length antenna without that.
I never realized the length began at the tuner. I'd always thought it started where it connected to the backstay antenna... How would shielding around the segment from the tuner to the backstay affect antenna performance? Any ideas on that?
That would make more sense. As I look back, I don't see a VHF antenna.
It's fun to think about all this for sure...
dj
Yachts without rigging would usually use a vertical antenna. Again, most verticals are about 23' tall. So it is possible the OP might have some kind of connector either on the transom or possible on the stern near the pushpit/railing. It would probably be some kind of screw on mount that are found on cars.
Shielding would prevent the most active part of the antenna from radiating. The highest concentration of radiated power is at that point, the output port on the tuner. One can place a fluorescent bulb at that point and it will glow. That is how, in the old days, hams would tune their radios, for maximum brightness. The white cable that goes from the tuner to the base of the wire/backstay/vertical is not coax, but GTO-15, which has the same diameter as RG-8X/RG-58/LMR-240. It could be mistaken for coax by appearance.
Sometimes this is more fun than sailing. At least more challenging in ways.
One of its impressive features is the superb, noise-cancellation application. The scanner can effectively filter out the static from the electronics devices nearby, for better communications. Alongside the top-notch audio quality, it’s compact and comfortable to hold. It fits the hands perfectly for ease of handling.