You might also want to consider using copper straps as the "horizontal
ground rods" in rocky soil. Bury them at the same depth as, but, obviously,
at right angles to, the interconnecting conductors and use appropriate
connectors and joint compound. And it's better to use more shorter
straps than fewer longer ones. In the latter case you're building up
inductance over the length of the long strap and essentially wasting the
copper material at the far end of each run.
Polyphaser's GLEP book (I just got mine) shows, on pp. 38-39, how a ground
system "fills up" with lightning energy. Inductance acts like blockages
along each conductive path, making it more difficult for the ground system
to "fill up"; the ungrounded energy goes somewhere else (into your shack).
When I worked at a power company in Pennsylvania we ran into glaciated rock
(boulders buried a foot or two below the surface) throughout the Pocono
Mountains and we laid our ground rods at substations there horizontally in
trenches. Seemed to work. GL.
-Gene Smar AD3F
-----Original Message-----
From: K7LXC@aol.com <K7LXC@aol.com>
To: baldwin@primenet.com <baldwin@primenet.com>; towertalk@contesting.com
<towertalk@contesting.com>
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Date: Saturday, October 17, 1998 9:49 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rods
>
>In a message dated 98-10-17 00:55:57 EDT, baldwin@primenet.com writes:
>
>> I just read comments on the
>> (antenna) reflector from a fellow Arizonian who also had the same
problem.
>> I also was wondering like he did (thought it might be a dumb question)
>> why do ground rods have to be buried vertically ? Why can't a few
>> (#12 six feet) wires be layed out horizontally just a few inches down?
>
> They can be installed horizontally. As long as they're below the frost
>line (yeah right - Arizona), they can be used in that configuration.
Obviously
>the hemisphere of influence is only 1/2 in the ground so you might want to
>have additional ground rods to make up for it. Otherwise, all other
>construction techniques would apply.
>
>Cheers, Steve K7LXC
>
>--
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