Hi Larry

Just a quick thought.

Since a moved from the marine band to 2m is down in freq you may get
away with something you can slip over the marine whip to increase C to
ground. I am thinking something loose here, not so much a metal to metal
connection. Since there will be a greater effect at the top end maybe a
piece of metal pipe just sitting close to the top, maybe buffered with a
grommet or something to hold it in place.

Might be worth an experimenting if the 2m VSWR on the marine whip is
beyond bounds!

Of course if you have the money to throw at it, mounting a high gain
vertical on a steadicam mount might solve the movement induced pattern
problems! grin

Cheers Bob VK2YQA

Larry wrote:

I'll follow the link that Bob gave and see what the guy is using. I
suppose I could disconnect the marine VHF antenna and hook it up to the
ICOM and a SWR meter and see what I get. I guess I should give that a
try. I don't need to do anything to try that.

I know that I'd lose some of whatever gain those things claim, as the
antenna would seldom be completely vertical, but I've never found that
to be all that significant anyway. I just need to have an antenna which
does not rely on a ground plane. Since I'm only fishing on lakes, I
don't think that is all that significant anyway. I've found that marine
VHF gets almost nowhere (nobody around) so I think I'd do better with 2
meters.