On Sun, 23 Apr 2017, rickman wrote:

On 4/23/2017 4:26 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 23 Apr 2017 15:16:40 -0400, rickman wrote:

I said the particular case I was being asked about was not over salt
water. I didn't say it was on a river. The particular case is for use
on the Great Lakes.

It's my understanding the propagation over the Great Lakes is similar
to that over the ocean. However, I have no experience on the Great
Lakes.

I believe the issue of salt water came up because of a materials concern,
aluminum vs. stainless steel.


Your info is helpful. Thanks.

Y're welcome. I mentioned the problem to a friend who was into
kayaking when he was younger. He said that kayaks often carry push
poles to get them off the rocks. These are often used as an
improvised distress flag mast. I found this one:
https://thesuperstick.com/product/push-pole/
which goes to 17ft extended. Hopefully, there are cheaper models.

Not sure who told you about "push poles", but I've never run into kayaker
with a push pole. If you get on rocks, you have a paddle. I don't even know
where you would stow a push ploe. Much better to not get on the rocks.


YOu have the length of the kayak. A bamboo pole is light, and making an
antenna out of wire won't burden the pole. The real issue, I'd say, is
figuring out something to put on the kayak to hold the pole. For
emergencies, you can probably just have some fishing line tied to the top
of the pole, and hold that as a "guy wire".

If there was some way to hold the oar against the kayak, some clip on
antenna that used the oar as a mast would be better than nothing, and of
course doesn't require an extra pole.

A bit of height probably does make an improvement, after that the "mast"
has to get higher and higher to be useful.

Michael