SSB Finishing Touches

 
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.

Another connection on the transceiver is for GPS information.  This is displayed on the head unit screen as latitude and longitude and also used in DSC mode so your position is automatically transmitted.  Both our VHF and SSB radios have DSC capability.  To get the GPS info I'm tying into the NMEA 2000 backbone using a gadget from Raymarine called a "VHF NMEA 0183 to STng converter" (p/n E70196, $75).  Only one of these is required for both radios.  The input side provides the GPS info and the output from the radio provides location information of the vessel you're in contact with.  This might be handy if you're traveling with a group of boats and keeping in touch using the DSC mode.  If you're spread out over 20 miles of ocean each boat will still be displayed and identified on your chart plotter with pop-up flags containing all the boat's information. Pretty sweet!

The final connection is for the modem, in our case a Pactor-4 Dragon DR-7400 from SCS (click here).  This little unit allows the SSB radio and our Mini Mac computer to communicate, giving us the capability of sending/receiving e-mail and downloading weather information.  This thing costs as much as the radio itself but this is the main reason we wanted a SSB radio, being able to stay in touch with friends and family by e-mail, even when we're away from a WiFi connection.  Maybe just as important is the ability to pick up weather forecasts anywhere in the world.  This little box is a key component for our travel plans.

Once I finished up all the wiring down below I went back topsides and completed the connections in the cockpit locker.  All our wiring runs through the genset compartment so I needed to pull the genset forward to allow me to get in behind it to finish the job.  This is a tight space requiring the dexterity of a contortionist and made it obvious to me that I'm really getting too old for this kind of stuff.  I can get into the tight spots but then it's a major struggle to get back out.  It wasn't that long ago that I could do this stuff, no problem.  Getting old sucks.

The mounting board has had over a week for the 5200 to set so I went ahead and mounted the antenna tuner 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.  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 and I managed to drop two of them before finally threading 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 an expensive collection down there.

At the ground lug I made connections for RF ground and the green wire for the control cable.   The RF ground is a critical component in the SSB antenna system.  The actual back-stay 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.  A really good ground is key to having a good, clean and strong signal.  It's important to understand that to keep system noise to a minimum an RF ground needs to be separate from all other grounds on a boat, including the batteries, engine and bonding system.  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 water the boat sits in as the ground plane and is pretty effective.  The drawback is that the bronze plate requires cleaning.  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.

I'm going to try something a little different called a counterpoise made by KISS-SSB (click here).  This is a series of wires cut to exactly 1/4 wavelength for the most common frequencies used on the SSB radio.  The tuned wires are contained in a heavy tube about 9' long that is run inside the hull and connects to that same ground lug.  This sells for $149, requires no holes in the hull and installation takes about 10 minutes.

The high voltage output at the other end of the antenna tuner was pretty straight forward.  It has a boot that slips over the insulator to prevent any moisture running down the wire from getting inside the tuner.  It's designed so it can be mounted outside in the weather and that would explain the need for the boot.  Probably not needed in this location but it went on anyway.  I drilled through the back side of the coaming and installed a weather-proof feed through.  The wire used to connect the antenna tuner to the back-stay is GTO-15, originally designed for use with neon signs.  Since this is a high voltage cable I ran it through conduit with 1.625" stand-offs attached to the non-insulated part of the back-stay.  I placed the stand-offs every 6" to give the conduit plenty of support and it's strong enough to be used as a grab handle while moving around the cockpit.  The conduit exits through a PVC cap at the top of the conduit just above the bottom insulator and makes a gentle 180 degree turn before connecting to the back-stay with a "GO-To Bug" clamp.  I sealed it up with tape but then read the "Sailor's Quick-Start Guide" where I found that this clamp is supposed to be left exposed to weather to keep it accessible for cleaning on a regular basis.  OK, gotta go back and fix that.

The final part of my work this weekend involved installing an earth ground for the antenna tuner.  I decided to go with this after discussing it with some friends with the same SSB radio and KISS counterpoise.  The radio comes with 10' of 4" wide heavy copper foil.  I ran this from the ground lug on the tuner down to the packing gland nut on the rudder post.  Anywhere it changed direction I folded it over on itself to form a 90 degree turn.  At a convenient spot I cut the tape across and mounted it to a block of wood, leaving a gap between the two ends.  Across this I soldered four capacitors (0.15uf, 100v) to create a DC block that will prevent electrolytic corrosion. I then covered the edges of the foil with Gorilla tape to hold it in place and prevent injuries from the sharp edges.

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.

The Continuing SSB Saga

My original estimate of having a four day weekend to install this thing was off by the speed of light.  First of all, a four day weekend does not necessarily mean there's 8 hours per day available to work on projects.  With everyday chores and unforeseen priorities I'm probably lucky to get in four hours per day.   Besides, everything I do takes at least twice as long as I originally thought it would.  Maybe even twice that.
 
I went back at it this weekend and pulled the cables through to the cockpit locker on the starboard side.  I want to install the antenna tuner there because we're using the starboard side backstay for the antenna and we need to keep the high voltage wire as short as possible.  After I got the cables pulled 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 HV 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.

With that delay in mind I went below to the Nav Station and concentrated on the power for the transceiver.  This is mounted in a cabinet directly over the batteries for the house bank.  Perfect!  I plan to run power directly from the batteries instead of through the breaker panel to keep out any stray noise.  I'm mounting 40 amp blade fuses just downstream from the batteries, one on each leg (+ and -).  Up at the radio there's a 30 amp fuse on the + side but the bigger fuses will protect the wiring (fingers crossed, knock on wood, swing a chicken over my head, etc, etc) in the event of a nearby lightning strike.  I'm running #8 wire from the batteries up to the transceiver.  It comes with what looks like #10 wire so we'll mount a terminal block up there right next to it to make the connection.  That way we'll have maximum diameter wire for most of the run to give us maximum voltage and minimum noise.

I also worked on finishing up the wiring at the transceiver.  In the 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.

That part back in the beginning where I went on and on about how I never have enough time to get anything done?  Uhm, gee, go figure.  On Friday I was climbing off the boat, literally.  The wind had been blowing ferociously out of the NW for about four days and the water level in our creek had dropped about 4'.  To get off the boat we had to climb up one of the pilings to get up to the decking of the dock.  Once I got up on my feet I looked out over the marina and saw a huge column of smoke rising above the masts.  At the same time I heard sirens coming in from all over the place.  At first I thought the smoke was coming from Calypso, a local bar that's been closed for renovation.  Oh no, not the rum!  I later found out it was actually a house across the street.  Bummer.  I mean, it would have been bad either way but I hate to see someones home go up in smoke.  Still, there's something beyond fascination about a fire.  This one had equipment come in from miles away, as far away as Bowie.  There musta been twenty fire trucks out there.  Slow day at the VFD's I guess.  They set up a pumper in the marina at the haul-out ramp.  That little operation alone drew quite a crowd.  There was fire equipment everywhere.  They had so many fire trucks respond to this fire that they had to close the road off at Rte 2, about 3 miles down the road.  Anyway, I managed to waste quite a bit of time scoping out all the action.  Didn't get back to the boat for quite a while.  Still can't figure out why all my projects take so long.

Projected Time Does Not Equal Actual Time

This time of year tends to get busy with family and all sorts of things going on.  Most important of all, we recently hit a major milestone in our lives.  Cheri has retired, ending a twenty year career as a Project Manager with the Federal government.  Woohoooo!  Congratulations Baby!  This also marks a point on our calendar where we have just three months to go before throwing off the dock lines and heading south.  I can't believe we've come this far.  The last five years has flown by so quickly.  It had better slow down now so we can savor some of that time we have ahead of us.

I did manage to make some progress on several of our projects and others....not so much.  The most time consuming of them all, varnishing the teak, has come to a halt because of the cold weather.  I had originally thought I could crank this one out in about four weekends.  Over the duration of the project I lost track of just how long I had actually been working on it and recently realized that it's been since late October, about ten weeks.  Yikes! Of course most of that time was lost due to weather or traveling (or procrastination) or whatever but the really significant thing about this is that I left all that blue tape on there.  They say you're only supposed to leave it on for a few days at most because it gets really tough to remove after a while.  It's now been somewhat more than a while and guess what?  It's true.  That blue tape is a bear to remove.  I got out there this weekend and started peeling it off, very slowly, with a single edged razor blade to encourage the sections that didn't want to come up on their own.  That's right!  Give me a blade and my dark side comes out.  This took hours with very little progress.  Then it rained for two days.  After the rain stopped I went back out and found that the tape came up much easier.  OK, thanks for that.  Somebody is looking out for me, fer sure.

Some other things went a little easier.  I replaced the life lines (hand rail) this weekend.  The old ones were covered in white vinyl or PVC or something and had developed rust stains.  When I removed the stanchions for cleaning and re-bedding I took the old lines down to West Marine in Annapolis and placed an order for all new lines in bare stainless wire with all new fittings.  We're only running the wire lines from the bow back to the gates on each side and will use 1" stainless tube from there back around the cockpit.  Mounting the new lines was pretty painless  I also added two stanchion mounts on the port side up by the bow for a whisker pole.

I have the parts for building the cabinet in the aft cabin and once this is finished I can get started on the water maker.  I also have all the parts needed to install a single side-band (SSB) radio.  Time for a priority list.  I reasoned that the radio installation should come first because with that completed Cheri can spend some time getting familiar with it while I build the cabinet and install the water maker.  Good plan.  I had a four day weekend and figured this would be plenty of time.  Best laid plans and all that.

Last year we had some cabinetry done in the galley and at the same time I reconfigured the instruments located in the Nav Station cabinet.  In addition to working on the instrument panel I had a small cabinet added on top to house the radios, VHF and SSB.  We didn't have the SSB radio yet but I knew we would eventually get one so I had the cabinet maker install the cut-outs for an ICOM-M802 head unit and speaker.  Because of that the actual installation for that part was pretty simple.  I actually sat down and read the instruction manual (ICOM M802 SSB Users Manual) and here I found a bit of information I hadn't considered when I re-did the Nav Station.  In the manual it says to place the radio's head unit in a position that's easy to get to from a comfortable seated position, taking into consideration left or right hand use.  Geez, good idea, although I'm not really planning on spending hours on this thing.  Really just wanted it for weather and simple communications.  I think we'll try it the way I have it for a while, years maybe, and see if it suits our needs.  Maybe some day I'll decided to reconfigure the instruments again and can place it in a better position.  Right.  Because I have so much time for stuff like that.

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.  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 back-stays. 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.

Right now the plan is to complete this installation next weekend.  I'll do a complete write-up and add some pictures then.

Since we've been talking about time I'll just point out here that I have 65 days, 6 hours and 45 minutes to go until my last day of work.  Two more weeks beyond that is our scheduled cast off time.