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[TowerTalk] Ground Rod Plating

To: Towertalk Reflector <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Ground Rod Plating
From: Byron Tatum <bjtatum1@att.net>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2021 04:15:41 +0000 (UTC)
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Hello-    Possibly someone here may know answers, I would like to know about 
this. I had a 110' 45G tower up for about 8 years located about halfway between 
Houston and Galveston, TX. I had 6 x 10' copper clad steel ground rods down, 
interconnected with #2 solid copper wire. Soil was the gumbo as they call it. 
There were 2 rods going out from each tower leg under guy wire pattern. I used 
Cadweld One-Shots to attach #2 wire to ground rods. When I moved to this new 
QTH in East Texas I jacked the rods out of the ground and salvaged as much of 
the #2 wire as I could. All of the 6 ground rods had a grayish-white appearing 
crusty coating stuck on them, it was worse in the top 4' of the rods. Appears 
some form of mineral deposits. I used sandpaper to get it off but underneath 
the crusty outer part, up against copper, the material was plated onto the 
copper and took some work to get it sanded off. Appears I suffered no loss of 
copper cladding thickness.   Just curious what the material is, I assume it is 
same minerals that show up in hard water. Even more curious about, when a 
ground rod gets coated like this, does it suffer any loss of its 
performance?Thanks,Byron W5FH 
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