Counterpoise for SSB

[MM5AHO]

Why woulod you buy an expensive system that looks dubious when you can do better with some simple wires.
A "grounding" plate, is not necessarily the best system. In my experience far worse that wire counterpoises.

 

[oldvarnish]

We fitted a counterpoise known as KISS-SSB http://www.kiss-ssb.com/ prior to our last Atlantic crossing. IT cost $149, slides anywhere under the coach roof, we have it under the aft berth. Its about 12 feet long and can be curved to fit, tube shaped and attaches to our tuner. NO copper foil, wiring etc. The thing is amazing, our radio has never worked better. We were regularly stopped by other cruisers to say that the transmission from our radio was fantastic and we managed to pick up Herb all the way from Florida to Falmouth!

I've got one of those and it works.

I hesitate to say this because others are swift to point out that you can make one yourself/ the ideas's flawed/ it's a rip-off etc. But they do work. And compared with the cost of a plate, a haul-out to fit it, the copper strip (plus more holes in the hull) I reckon it could be good value.

Of course, the problem with all these discussions is that most of us only have one system so we can never compare - we cab only say whether or not it works to our satisfaction.

 

[KellysEye]

>An iron keel is fine for a ground, if you drill a threaded hole you can screw a stud in then screw on the nut a bit then attach a wire to it, the wire leads to the ATU Automatic Tuning Unit which tunes to every frequency.

Oops that's seriously wrong, the stud wire goes to the earth on the SSB then the SSB output wire goes to the ATU, the earth does not need a capacitor, we didn't have one.

 

[haydude]

I have not been through the whole thread, therefore I do not know if this has already been discussed.

One note of caution is that you do not want to inject direct currents into your keel otherwise you will create an electrolysis problem.

But you can use effectively your keel as RF ground, because RF is an alternate current.

You absolutely do not want to join a ground wire directly to the keel! This will let through any current passing trough it. Most devices have RF ground and Negative joined together and you can think of the consequences.

The solution is to solder some capacitors between the ground plate and the keel bolt where you do the join.
In this way you will let the RF get through, but block damaging direct currents that are cause of electrolysis.
If you are not confident building the Capacitor join yourself there is a company selling one ready made (sorry cannot remember name and site, but I found it on-line), only they sell this device for hundreds when it can be made with capacitors worth less than £5, a plastic box and some potting compound.