A friend of mine is having fits with his marine radio installation.  He's got a SGC with the remote head mounted at the nav station, the radio mounted about three feet aft of the head, and then the antenna tuner mounted about three feet aft of the radio, direclty below the insulated backstay.  His transmissions are garbled to the point you can't comprehend what he's saying.  He sent the rig back to SGC; they checked it out and said it's perfect.  During the phone conversation they mentioned that the rig needed to be at least 9 feet from the antenna tuner, otherwise there would be a lot of feed back or interference of some kind that would screw up his signal.

Has anyone heard of this probem?  In particular with SGC or ICOM (what he intends to replace the SGC with)?

The last guy is right, but: I use an insulated backstay (about 63 feet long), a Gateway laptop, an SCS PTC II, a ICOM marine radio (for sailmail), a Yaesu ham radio (for Winlink), a SGC auto antenna tuner and sinter plates for my rf ground.  I put out a really nice signal and the setup works great.  While off the Yucatan Peninsula I worked the northern US on SSB with 20 watts, and it sounded as clear as talking to them on the phone.  Email worked great.  If you want more specifics, let me know.  kk7om@nvbell.net

Can anyone tell me how to contact the manufacturer of the Schurr Keys.  I understand it was Herr Schurr and that he retired.  If anyone can give me a lead on how to contact him I'd appreciate it.  I'm interested in acquiring the rights to continue manufacturing his keys.

I'm looking for a site that has more details on modifying the trasmit range on the FT 100.  Specifically, identifying resistors 6035 and 6036.  The picture at www.mods.dk/mods seems inconsistent with the description.  If you know of another site that has mods for the Ft 100, please let me know.

Insulated backstay antenna on a sail boat.  I modeled it in EZNEC.  By changing the feed point I can vary the SWR at the frequencies I use from about 2 to infinity.  Changing the feed point also dramatically changes the radiation pattern.  I get a better take off angle with a middle feedpoint: 35 degrees with a gain of 6.69 dBi, but then the SWR for 20 meters is 10+.  On the other hand, with the feed point 15% of the way from the end the SWR is about 1.6 but the take off angle for the strongest part of the lobe is at about 45 degrees and the gain at that is only 2.74 dBi.

I guess the question is: if the tuner will tune the antenna at the higher feed point I would be better off with the good radiation pattern, right?

Am I loosing anything by using a tuner instead of varying the feed point to where the antenna is naturally resonant at the frequency I need to use.