Communication System Problem Solved, Maybe

I spent several hours yesterday remounting the HF tuner.  I purchased 25 ft of 3" wide copper tape for $50 USD.  Its thickness was stated to be "3 mil" which I stupidly took to mean 3 millimeters.  In fact it was .003 of an inch, less than 0.5 mm.  That was very disappointing but I had to work with what I had.  I placed the original 2" wide but much thicker tapes that I had purchased in Hawaii in their original positions, grounding to two points of the stainless steel Monitor wind steering frame.  I used the new ribbon to ground to two points on the stainless steel frame over the cockpit.

I think that I improved the installation by fixing the tapes so that they would be off the floor of the lazarette that is often sloshing with a thin layer of water.  I also used tape to keep the ferrite chokes off the floor.

Last night I tested the system and at first I had success, trying several Ham stations and successfully connecting to one in California.  But then I changed to "Sailmail" mode was disappointed to get the same problem of loss of connection between the laptop and the modem.  I tried to keep cool about the setback, knowing that there were other measures to be taken.

Today I remounted the Monitor water vane (which I had removed several weeks earlier) with the plan to try again with the paddle in the water, yielding a good path from the ground straps to the sea water.

During our regular daily Skype session I told Stephen, Brenda's son, about the setback.  He asked me if I was supplying power to the laptop with the AC-DC power pack during these tests.  In fact I have been, and I realized that this was one difference between our successful use of the system when we were visiting the island a few weeks ago and the failures back here at the marina.  Stephen said that external power connection to a laptop can generate a ground loop and suggested that I run the test with no power pack and running only on the laptop's internal batteries.

Tonight I went through a series of tests with the paddle still out of the water and had no problems after hailing about 4 Ham stations, connecting with one of them, then connecting to two Sailmail stations.  I was pleased to see that even surrounded by a forest of masts the connections were pretty good. And it is pleasing to see that there seems to be enough grounding within the boat without the need to lower the Monitor paddle in the water (though I'm sure that the performance will be much better with the paddle down.)

So it looks like the mysterious and scary modem connection problem may have been solved, and my thanks go to Stephen in Australia.