On Pitufa we have a ham radio station that consists of
- a Yaesu FT-857 transceiver,
- an SCT PTC-II USB pactor modem with pactor 3 license,
- a CG 3000 automatic antenna tuner,
- and a 13m-long isolated segment of the back stay as antenna.
The CG 3000 tuner is mounted on deck underneath the radar arch in a separate watertight box (see picture below).
So it is placed next to the back stay keeping the feed line as short as possible.
Pitufa’s aluminium hull is isolated from the DC ground, so a series of capacitors is connected between the tuner’s ground terminal and the ground wire. The ground wire is simply connected to the stainless steel radar arch.
We use AirMail3 and the Winlink network to send and receive emails and to get weather forecasts in form of grib files. It works great even far out there on the blue disc. It offers services like position reports (for Pitufa’s position, see here) and integration with services from Saildocs.com. To sign up a Winlink account you need to have a ham license. See www.winlink.org for more information. My email address is OE6CHF at winlink.org, but note that due to the limited bandwidth only short messages (no attachments!) are appreciated.
We are Linux users. On our computers, Airmail is executed using wine and it doesn’t show any problems yet. For viewing grib files, we can recommend zyGrib.
Though we haven’t got the hang of it yet, we are definitely looking forward to joining some cruiser’s ham nets.
Christian — OE6CHF
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- Radar arch with antenna tuner. The island of Vulcano in the background.
