"Charlie J" wrote in message
...
Gary-
The ideas that you are advancing may work...however they absolutely fly in
the face of all conventional wisdom wrt installing an end fed antenna
system
on a non-steel boat using a modern antenna coupler/tuner. ....

You're both right. Manufacturers of land-based vertical HF antennas (eg
Butternut) mount the radiator very close to the ground (ie, inches) with
radials to properly couple it's image to the soil. The same would be true
of HF verticals on boats were it not for the problem of waves. Ideally, the
ground terminal of the antenna would be touching the water and the antenna
attached to its top, sort of like a "bugcatcher" but we instead have to put
the bottom of the radiator undesireably high to keep it from being
periodically drown - and that's where the compromises begin. These
compromises work, some amazingly well.

Conventional wisdom puts the antenna as high as possible. That's because
most boaters and their tech's are used to VHF, which propagates line of
sight, and thus needs height for max range. But HF is a different beast. It
propagates by ground wave, NVIS and ducting so HF antenna height doesn't
really matter. But don't say that here!! Half the "experts" here believe
that electrons have no mass or inertia (c:

Regards, K3DWW