Can use some advice. Adding a bunch of ground rods and attaching #4 solid
wire with Cadweld one-shots to my tower.
I am moving the receive coax switch from the tower to my shed - much closer
to the receive ewes/pennants. My coax/control wire bundle from the house
passes the shed on the way to the tower. The shed is 30' from the house and
the tower is 100' from the shed.
- Should I put a ground rod(s) at the shed where the receive coax switch
will be mounted?
- Should I run something like a #6 or #8 ground wire from the tower to the
receive coax switch? If so, should it be separated form the coax/control
cable bundle?
- Is it a bad idea moving the receive coax switch to a separate location
from the tower, or doesn't it matter?
As a side note, here are some things that I have happened recently.
Started adding more ground rods as I only had 9 that were cadwelded with #4
stranded copper wire. Rods have been in the ground 8 years. With an easy
yank two of the stranded wires came off the ground rods. The ends of the
wires were not shiny. Don't know if they corroded or if they were weakened
by the cadweld.
Presently replacing all of the stranded wire with #4 solid wire besides
adding 9 more rods.
Also, noticed that the antennas- 40, 80 and 160M, which go through a coax
switch 4' above ground on the tower, had their resonant points go a little
lower in freq, plus were now broader. Turned out to be the shield of the
1/2" hardline is open. Got it isolated to 15' which is buried under a flower
bed. There are no splices in the hardline. I guess the shields of the other
hardline were acting as the return path? The other 3 hardlines have their
shield grounded to the bottom of the tower. The hardline that went to the
coax switch was not grounded at the bottom. Was counting on the ground strap
4' up at the coax switch. Guess I better ground that shield at the bottom
too. Not sure if the difference in height of the grounding kits or the lack
of enough tower grounding caused this problem.
73,
Tony
N2TK
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