UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Poor VSWR on Fibre glass construction boats

GMB · 25th Jan 2023, 9:29 pm

I am a great believer in end-to-end testing. If you have a boat and it has a radio then you test it when floating. The sea is a much bigger ground plane than anything on the boat so it only needs the radio to couple to it somehow, and I would have expected that was how it would be designed.

There is a danger that if you made the VSWR perfect when 50 foot in the air then it might be very bad when in the water.

It's probably OK, but you don't know until you actually try it for real.
And of course you could have been (un)lucky - the VSWR in a bad sitution tends to depend on cable lengths so it might have got lucky and been perfect, but again would change when in the water I suspect.

But no need to worry, I have already made a note to always take my own radio when out at sea.

25th Jan 2023, 9:29 pm	#8
GMB Dekatron Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: near Reading (and sometimes Torquay) Posts: 3,094	Re: Poor VSWR on Fibre glass construction boats I am a great believer in end-to-end testing. If you have a boat and it has a radio then you test it when floating. The sea is a much bigger ground plane than anything on the boat so it only needs the radio to couple to it somehow, and I would have expected that was how it would be designed. There is a danger that if you made the VSWR perfect when 50 foot in the air then it might be very bad when in the water. It's probably OK, but you don't know until you actually try it for real. And of course you could have been (un)lucky - the VSWR in a bad sitution tends to depend on cable lengths so it might have got lucky and been perfect, but again would change when in the water I suspect. But no need to worry, I have already made a note to always take my own radio when out at sea.