Dave,
My strong believe is that, yes you should make an as good ground for your tower
as you can afford but, the important thing is IMHO that you have a very good
ground connection between your tower and your shack. With that I mean that you
have a good size conductor connecting the ground in your shack and your tower.
In my case: I have 9 4' grounding rods connected to my tower. My tower is
close, ~6 feet, to my shack. (My shack has a 100% aluminum shield around it,
floor, walls, and ceiling.) I have a 8 inch wide aluminum strap/ribbon
connecting the shack ground to the tower. The idea is that, in the event of a
lightning strike in/on the tower, the tower will have an elevated voltage as a
result of the grounding resistance. I figure that if my shack will be elevated
to the same voltage as the tower very little voltage will enter my shack as
long as the resistance between my tower and my shack is much lower than any
other ground connection to the shack.
Ideally the tower and the shack, with all the equipment inside, should all be
grounded with the same grounding system. It might not be possible like in my
case as I have a power line (with its own safety ground) and a phone line
coming from my house, and the house has its own ground. I don't think I have
had any hits in my tower and I am not looking forward to the day it will happen.
73 de,
Hans - N2JFS
On Thursday, September 9, 2021, Artek Manuals <Manuals@artekmanuals.com>
wrote:
I 've read a lot of articles over the years about ground systems and how
to build a good one. Most of them ignore actual soil conditions and few
talk about the differences between "DC/AC (Low Freq)/Lightning" and RF
ground vs frequency
But how do I actually measure it ? And once I have this number how good
is "good enough"
Take my situation I live on ancient sandbar 65' above sea level In Florida
. Now this is practically a mountain in Florida and the soil is so poor
that below about 6" nothing but granular quartz exists, mostly not even
roots, a desert with a lot a rainfall. The soil is so soft that I can push
the first 5' of a 10' ground rod in by hand. I often wonder why my house
doesn't sink into it and from a phenomena called "sink holes" a few house
do.
So to coin a take on the old light bulb joke " How many engineers with 10'
ground rods does it take to make a good ground (RF ground in this case@
1.8 Mhz) and how will they know when they have enough 10' rods"
Dave
NR1DX
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Dave Manuals@ArtekManuals.com www.ArtekManuals.com
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