Friday 6 March 2009

getting there

Ground plate arrived today.... its a strange thing.. its made up of many thousands of tiny bronze balls (about 0.5mm each) that are compressed together at temperature to form a solid (ish) mass....

Because the final product retains a huge amount of air between the balls, it also has a collossal surface area, and its this benefit that you are looking for.... it allows a massive amount of seawater to be in contact with it....

It will be connected to the aerial (or more correctly, the aerial tuner) using a copper strip of about 7cm width and around 1mm thick to provide a good path for RF to ground (remembering that RF in effect travels along surfaces, so has a very different requirement from a ground than a normal AC or DC ground....

James is coming along Saturday afternoon with the SSB and the watermaker, so no doubt i'll sit on board just looking at the things for several hours!

Finally, Doug is down, and has already called me to suggest a beer or two would be in order for Sat evening.... who am I to disagree?

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