In article ,
"Eric Fairbank" wrote:

Icom needs to modernize their thinking and get rid of their "old school"
installation guides. Wire radials are the way to go on your sailboat. Not
copper foil or wide copper strips, just plain old 14 gauge wire radials. I
suggest you read some of the threads about this on the Maritime Mobile Ham
Forum from people with real world experience with marine HF installations.
You'll find the answers to your questions the

http://cruisenews.net/cgi-bin/mmham/webbbs_config.pl

Eric


Radials are the WORST type of RF Ground for ANY MF/HF Marine Antenna
System. Anyone who has any sense at all can understand this, just
thinbk about it. First, they have to be very long when dealing with
frequencies below 4 Mhz, and unless you have a BIG vessel, you don't
have room for 1/4 wave radials. Second, Radials need to be resonant
to do any good, and that limits them to one or two frequencies, where
Marine Radios need to have antennas that can operate on many Bands,
which is why non-resonate, low impedance, RF Grounds, are used
by most all Commercial Marine Antenna Systems. I suggest that you
go out and get 30 Years of Commercial Marine Radio Installation and
Operation Experience, and then come back and explain it all to us,
again.......in detail.....if you live that long....

Me been there, done that......