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

"Will" wrote in message
...
I want to set up a hf antenna for my sailboat.

I have read various guides from Icom etc.

They suggest running copper foil to a Dynaplate and use sea water as the
ground. How can this work when the Dynaplate is below sea water?

Is sea water equal to copper wire radials as a RF ground system?

Does sea water make a good enough ground without radials?

How can a piece of copper metal about 1 ft square equal several radials
laying on the boats deck?

Why do i have to use copper foil when most other people suggest using
ordinary copper wire?

Over seawater what would be the best number of radials to use considering
that maximum length i can run is 40 ft. I am planning to use a backstay
antenna with a SGC 230 Tuner.

All ideas and comments appreciated.

Will