The
bigger part of the SSB installation was mounting the transceiver and
running the wires. The transceiver weighs about ten pounds and the
manual makes a big deal about not hanging it from overhead and being
sure to secure it firmly to a flat horizontal surface. It's dimensions
are 11.5" x 11.5" x 4.75" so it's not so much huge as it is dense. If
this baby broke loose it would do some damage. It also draws 25 amps so
it must produce some pretty good heat too. I spent some time trying to
find a good location for this thing. I originally had wanted to mount
it under the Nav Station desk but that would create a conflict with your
legs when you sit down plus it would require a hefty shelf to mount it
on. I ended up taking over the cabinet just forward of the Nav
Station. It has a louvered door so hopefully it'll have sufficient
ventilation. We had been using this as a catch-all for CD's and DVD's
and pretty much anything having to do with a computer. Everything was
just piled up in there and the space was poorly used. I decided I could
build a shelf to support the "stuff" and mount the transceiver and the
modem underneath. The cabinet is 15" deep and the shelf is only 12"
deep with a gap in front and back so there should be good enough air
flow. And yes, I added fiddles to both the front and the back of the
shelf.There are a number of cable connections to this thing. The control head and speaker each have one. The modem has another. There's also a port for connecting GPS. On the back there's three cables that run to the back of the boat and connect to the antenna tuner which then connects to one of the backstays. This has already been set up with insulators at the top and bottom to be used as the SSB antenna. One of the cables goes to a separate antenna for DSC (click here for more info). Running these three cables turned out to be a major pain in the tukhus (click here for more info). They come with connectors mounted at both ends and the two antenna cable connectors are pretty bulky. This makes pulling them through tight spots difficult at best. If the factory would install a connector at one end and provide a kit for the other it would make life soooooo much easier. I first tried pulling all three cables down the starboard side cable-run that goes behind the cabinets in the galley and dumps out in the cockpit locker. This was my number one choice because it's the most direct path and the main antenna cable is big and stiff and only 33' long. I spent the better part of a day trying to get the cables pulled through this location but in the end had to run them under the cabin sole, beneath the galley and then out through the genset compartment. I've only gotten them halfway through so far so I have at least a few more hours of work ahead of me. Even going this way is a tight squeeze and I'm beginning to see that this boat has way too many wires and hoses running down one side. No wonder she leans to starboard 2 degrees! Gonna hafta move all my future projects over to the port side.
While I was working on the physical installation Cheri has been installing the software to run the modem. This will allow us to send and receive e-mail by radio and pick up weather reports from NOAA. The biggest complication so far has been because we have Mac computers and the software is only made for PC's. She had to install Windows 8 to work with the e-mail program and the modem. Dang! We tried so hard but there's just no getting away from Microsoft. We'll see how it all works out when I get the radio up and running.
I went back at it the following weekend and pulled the cables through to the cockpit locker on the starboard side. Once that was finished I spent some time looking around for a good mounting location for the antenna tuner. I needed a spot about 8" x 16", a good piece of real estate on a boat. Plus it had to be where the high voltage wire wouldn't run near any other wiring because this could induce noise into other systems. This is a pretty high powered radio. I've heard stories about people keying the mike and the lights in the cabin would flash, electric toilets would flush, etc, etc. I don't think we need that kind of entertainment. Let's see now, we've got the wiring for shore power running through from here to there and the wiring for the genset goes over there. Oh yeah, all that wire over there is for the auto pilot. There was plenty of space on the inside of the hull but there's too much wiring it would have to cross and it's further away from the backstay than I wanted to be. I ended up settling on an overhead spot tucked up inside the cockpit coaming. I cut out a board and pre-drilled it to mount the tuner. Glopped it up with 5200 and used gorilla tape to hold it in place on the fiberglass until everything dries. In this 20 degree weather that'll probably take a few days before I can mount the tuner.
Down
below at the Nav Station I'm making the power connection to the
house bank batteries. The transceiver draws about 25 amps while
transmitting and has a 30 amp fuse on the positive power input. They
provide about ten feet of #10 wire but I'm using #8 for most of the run
to ensure adequate voltage levels. Coming from the batteries located
beneath the starboard settee the wire runs through 40 amp fuses, one for
each leg. This is simply to protect the wiring in the event of a
short. From there it runs up to
a terminal strip near the transceiver where it mates with the now
shortened #10 wire. I used non-insulated ring lugs with shrink wrap on
all wire terminations. Using #8 wire required some
heavy duty crimping and I ended up investing in a ratchet type crimping
tool. Money well spent. For the shrink wrap I used Cheri's blow
dryer. Not as fast as a heat gun but it did the job. After I made some
voltage checks I went back and dressed out all the cable runs and
neatened things up.
In the radio kit
there is a pile of RF "chokes", ferrite clips, that are used to inhibit
stray RF in order to reduce noise in the system. These get placed on
cables connected to the transceiver by placing a loop in the wire and
then snapping the choke in place. I ended up removing pretty much
everything I had done last weekend to re-do the cables. I also found
that after I installed the choke on the control cable for the antenna
tuner I no longer had enough wire length to plug it back in to the
transceiver. Now I hafta pull some back from the cockpit locker.
Grrr. One step forward, two steps back.
While I was at it I also added some chafe protection where the wires
pass through the bulkheads. I used split plastic wire loom, 3/4", and
forced it around the inside edges of the holes I had cut out with a hole
saw. Even with everything tied down firmly there's a chance the wire
will wear against the hard surface, especially where I had cut through
fiberglass. This is good insurance.
Another week went by before I got the antenna tuner mounted in the starboard side lazarette.
The location I settled on is basically up inside the aft coaming. This
works well for a short direct run to the backstay but once it's mounted
on the board most of the connections are facing away towards the center
of the cockpit and have to be made by feel. That's OK, I can do this
with my eyes closed. The only really difficult part was the wing nut
for the ground connection. Because of it's shape it's pretty tough to
get it started by feel alone and I managed to drop two of them before finally getting
it on properly. This is one of those locations where anything that
falls instantly rolls out of sight, in this case under the genset. At
$2.42 each, it's already a pretty pricey collection down there.At the ground lug I made connections for the RF ground and the green ground wire for the control cable. The RF ground is a critical component in the SSB system. The actual backstay wire between the insulators is really only half of the antenna. The other half is the ground which enables the RF signal to jump free of the antenna. This RF ground has to be totally separate from any other ground on the boat or you stand the chance of getting noise in the system. Noisy system equals lousy signal transmission. There are different techniques for creating a suitable RF ground on a boat. One is to mount a bronze plate on the outside of the hull below the waterline and connect a heavy gauge 4" wide copper tape between the mounting bolts inside and the ground lug of the antenna tuner. This uses the ocean as the ground plane and is pretty effective. The drawback is that the bronze plate gets fouled and requires cleaning to keep the transmission optimum. Another method is to run that copper tape along the inside of the hull and connect it to through hulls and deck mounting plates. They recommend you use about 100' of copper tape for this. The copper tape can also get fouled and would require periodic inspection.
As I was cleaning up at the end of the day I found the wingnuts I had dropped, both securely wedged in the wiring beneath the genset.
We fired up the radio and did a listen test to see if we could hear anything. Picked up some dudes chatting down in Miami. Cool! Now I gotta learn what all those knobs and buttons do so we can do some chatting of our own.
