T&T: SSB/Ham ground plane on a boat

[Chuck and Susan]

I have never seen this kind of set up in all my years of installing and
servicing SSB radios but that does not mean it won't work, just not sure. But
since the ground plane needs to be attached to the tuner I see these issues
with copper tubing. You will need to run the pipe from the location of your
tuner to underwater attachments such as thru-hulls or a Dynaplate, etc. It
also needs to attach to the lug on your tuner. So making these runs would seem
to be problematic as well as making the necessary attachment points. Copper
tubing will developer corrosion just as quickly and more or less severely as
copper strap, so I don't know that this would help with that issue. These are
just my initial thoughts. Chuck

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--- On Sun, 2/1/09, Jim Healy <i><gilwellbear at gmail.com> wrote:
 

Folks,

Question: relative to Marine SSB and Ham radio transceiver applications,
this morning I had a conversation with a boater who is planning to build an
RF ground plane out of 3/4" copper tubing, like you'd find in a house
plumbing system, instead of copper foil.  His reason was that pipe is much
easier to handle and secure during installation in those parts of the bilge
where humans don't fit, and of course, it's much more durable than
foil.
Since RF flows on the surface of a ground plane conductor, and the
circumference of 3/4" pipe approximates the 3" that is commonly found
on
commercial foil rolls, it seemed reasonable to me.  Do any of you have
experience with this approach?  Does it work?  Does it work well (low SWR)?
Does this seem to be a practical and reasonable idea?  Second question:
electrically, does a ground plane need to be end fed, or does it matter
where the feed point is?

Peg and Jim Healy aboard Sanctuary,