Mounting an ATU to a steel hull

[Jim Cate]

I have no personal experience with steel vessels, but have inspected many of my friends steelies. They all have countless bits, furniture, brackets, ceilings and so on screwed to timber battens which are glued to the steel hull. This ATU does not seem to be a big problem to me... glue and screw. In the unlikely event of a glue failure, the ATU will just hang there by the cables until you re attach it. Untidy, but not fatal!

Jim

[Scott Berg]

We use Weld Mount studs for this on many surfaces
Hard to beat...

http://www.weldmountsystem.com


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Goudurix]

Hi Orchidius (dear Bxx),

mounting a correctly sized plywood pannel to the steel hull (cleaned, de-greased) with Sikaflex or similar polyurethane based compound is easy to do.

But.....bear in mind that the stretch of wire running from the ATU to the base of the wire antenna outside IS part of the antenna and usually a high-voltage part of the antenna. I really advise against having that situation. You should try to locate the ATU very close to where you go through the hull or deck to connect to the antenna wire. Once again, if you want to, I'll come over to have a look.

In my boat, to be able to install the ATU just at the through-deck isolated connector the the antenna wire, I had to glue (with sikaflex) a plywood pannel against the top of the port aft locker so in fact the ATU is "hanging" from the top of that locker and has been there sonce a few years. No issue with this way of fixing a plywood pannel.

Jan

[georgelewisray]

2_cents:
Glue:
(a) You are not gluing to steel, more than likely you are gluing to the paint.
(b) try to fit the wooden glued bits so they are not 100% relying on the glue stuff but are resting/fitted to a stringer or something like that. Then gravity and mechanical strength take at least part of the load. (examples: if you glue to the overhead then the glue is doing it all and IF you used a glue that was solvent based if might weaken the paint bond and then ?? // However if you glue to the deck then gravity and the deck do most of the heavy lifting and the glue just stops sliding/jumping. IF is is on a bulkhead with a corner resting on a stringer then the stringer takes part of the load.)
(c) However it is mounted try to leave enough slack cable so that it can be unbolted and moved in a way that all parts are viewable/checkable/adjustable. If you make it so tight that there is no way work on the ATU with out totally unhooking and removing it then future trouble shooting just got a lot harder. That is in fact a good thing for the local economy where ever you happen to be at the time getting work done but bad for your pocketbook.