Virginia johns wrote in
:


I have an ICOM 802 SSB and have set up my backstay on my sailboat as
the antenna. My boat came with a Furuno weatherfax (208A) which I
have never used. We can't find an antenna for it on the boat. Can I
connect the weather fax to the backstay antenna and share it with the
SSB ? If so do I need a switch to toggle to the device that is in use
or can they compatibly share the one antenna.

Please forgive me if this is a stupid question....just learning...only
have my Technician Ham license so far.

thanks for any help you can offer -

Virginia,

It is most unlikely that you can connect both a transmitter and a
receiver to the same feedline, it will almost certainly destroy the
receiver.

You can connect two receivers to the same feedline, albeit with some
reduction in performance, but it might not matter much on the lower
parts of HF.

Some, but few, transcievers provide access to the antenna when switched
through to the receiver. If you have that facility, you could use it,
otherwise you could devise some kind of switching arrangement that
reliably prevents the Weatherfax receiver getting a dose of the
transmitter output.

Using a separate antenna for the Weatherfax might seem a solution, but
it needs to provide sufficient isolation so that the energy coupled into
the Weatherfax receiver input is below its damage threshold... and
some.

Owen