Long Distance Communication

We have finished our Marine Single Sideband (SSB) radio installation. We had everything in place except for the antenna. The antenna in our installation is one of our back stays. After the rigger inserted insulators, the middle part of the back stay, now isolated from the rest of the boat is a long wire antenna. It took a few days of experimenting and tweaking but we are up and running. This radio is designed for long distance communications. Our VHF marine radio is only good for about 25 miles or so. The SSB radio is good for communications for hundreds and thousands of miles. Once we leave coastal waters we will depend more on this radio for weather reports and to talk with other boats. We are also set up to send emails over this radio. This update to the blog was made using the SSB radio. We have had good success connecting to a radio near Dallas Texas. I normally update the blog directly on the internet, but we are expecting we will lose internet access in some areas. We also transmit our position with each connection. We cannot attach files or pictures to our email so the next post will include pictures of the radio installation.