On 4/24/2017 3:44 PM, Michael Black wrote:
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.

Bamboo poles are not all that light and they get water logged.
Everything on a kayak gets wet.

So far I haven't found anything definitive that even shows a better
antenna is needed. It would appear if you are trying to contact a
station with a high antenna some 20 miles away you might have trouble
with range, but the problem isn't that your antenna isn't high enough.
Reaching other handheld units is limited by line of sight which would be
helped by a higher antenna. I'm not sure which problem was being
addressed. Next time I talk to my buddy I'll ask more about this. I
think in reality this was prompted by someone recommending a home brew
antenna when the nature of the problem wasn't even explored.

--

Rick C