Ed wrote:


It's marine-grade RG-8x. The antenna is at the top of the mast, 36 ft
above the cabin top.




My thought, in asking this questions, was replacing the current coax
with two of smaller diameter, since you said the current hole in the mast
was too small to add one. Commerically, we often use a RG-58 type coax
that has a white Teflon jacket, commonly referred to as Motorola White
Teflon coax. It is considerably smaller than RG-8X and I would hazzard to
say you might be able to pull a pair of them up, using the original RG-8X
as a pull line. You will need to obtain connectors with the proper size
ferrule for it as it is smaller than RG-58. Good Luck.

Ed K7AAT


Ed,

Had a major case of memory corruption - my coax is RG-58, not the larger
8X ;-). I think I'll admit defeat and just find a way to shoehorn
another coax up the mast. Maybe I'll just drill thru the cabintop and
epoxy a stainless threaded SO-239 nipple thru it so the balsa core of
the fiberglass won't suck up moisture like a sponge. Then just make
another run up the mast.

The problem with drilling a larger hole in the mast step is that it's
harder to seal against moisture when you have lots of cables in a
relatively large hole. Water inevitably gets in...