DIY VHF Marine Antenna (Emergency Antenna?)

I like to give a little bit back to my marine / yachting customers. Many captains and engineers on yachts are very intelligent individuals. I’m a ham radio operator as well as working in marine communications and Internet Systems. I ran across a video on a ham radio related email list today. It was for a Do It Yourself VHF Marine Antenna. I thought that was a novel concept … ham radio operators often make (some) of their own antennas.

Most yachts have an engine room and engineering work spaces. With sufficient tools and such.

So what about a scenario? Now in every day practice your not going to make your own VHF antenna for marine. It’s just not practical. But what if something happened to your VHF antenna and you just had to transmit? What if your whole VHF Radio (or radios?) went bad. Not likely? What if a lightning strike occured?

So could you put yourself and your vessel back on the air? I say yes.

If you kept the appropriate measurements (see the video to follow) around safely somewhere, and some RG58 or better coax cable. Could you make an emergency antenna? I say yes again.

Another thought is … there are often handheld VHF marine radios onboard a vessel. So what’s the antenna connection for  those? I ask that question because you would need to. Is it BNC? Is it SMA? If you ran into a scenario where you had to make a better antenna (for better range) and the only radios that you had working were handheld VHF marine walkie talkies… then that would be what you had to use.

So having the correct adaptors around for the handheld VHF marine radios and the coax cable - some feet of that? maybe a small roll. And the correct connectors (and a soldering iron?) You could make an emergency communications system for your vessel. See the following video:

Now I didn’t make this video. But it seems fairly competent. And it could be used … for an emergency replacement antenna on a vessel or related support craft (work boat) to provide longer range VHF Marine Communications than a handheld walkie talkie could provide.

—
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net
+1 954-683-3426
communications @ marinetelecom.net

This entry was posted on 4. September 2010 at 04:51 and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.