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Author Topic: Station/Antenna Grounding  (Read 336 times)

K1KIM

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Station/Antenna Grounding
« on: November 16, 2020, 03:28:29 PM »

The following is my station plan with regard to grounding. Please critique with thoughts or constuctive criticism.

Antenna:
     A trapped vertical with ground radial plate. Coax runs 100' back to the first ground rod with a Polyphaser 10' from the house entry. This ground rod is daisy chained to a second ground rod at a distance 2x the depth of the first rod and then connected to the AC panel ground rod. All connections are with 4 ga bare copper wire laying on the ground not below.

Shack:
     All radios, antenna tuner, and meters are bonded with a short run of 3/4" tinned copper braid to a 1/2" copper pipe buss bar which is connected to the earth entry copper water service pipe with 6 ga copper wire which is also connected to the AC panel ground buss with 4 ga bare copper wire.

4 radios feed into a 5 way antenna switch which then has the output fed into a 2 way switch. One position to the antenna and the other to a dummy load.
The antenna output then feeds the antenna tuner and then an SWR meter.

The antenna is tuned by looking at the meters in the radios and the stand alone SWR meter is to monitor a coax/antenna failure.

All coax connections until after the stand alone SWR meter are RG8X. After that it is RG-8U and LMR-400.

It would be nice though to use the 8X until I get to the outside for flexibilty. It's only 25'. I am running barefoot though so any loss is an issue.



Can anyone see any errors here.

I can ground the chassis of the radios by using a 3 prong plug (the original power cords had no provision for a chassis ground-hybrids except for a TS-430s).
But this seems redundant since I am bonding them together and then to the panel ground via the ground rod and water pipe.

Question is whether there is any issue with having both? I would think not.

« Last Edit: November 16, 2020, 03:38:38 PM by KE8BFN »
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K6AER

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Re: Station/Antenna Grounding
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2020, 05:11:16 PM »

Ninety Five percent of all home lightning damage comes in via the AC feed to the home. All you wonderful grounding is the only efficient path an AC line surge has to ground and your radios just became fuses.

Put surge protection on your AC main panel. Cost is about $85 at Home Depot.

Read tutorials st PolyPhaser and Hager on grounding. Remember lightning is trying to earth.  You want your station on the side of the train track to earth ground.
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KC9QBY

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Re: Station/Antenna Grounding
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2020, 05:19:03 PM »

Hi,

Plausible that concept is already in plan, yet I was thinking of single point grounding panel (SPGP) in shack.  Everything needs to go thru it including mains, CATV, Ethernet, coax switches mounted on panel, buss bars to which power supply, rigs, tuner are attached. That panel is bonded to ground rod where coax enters house with bonding to service entry ground.

We have whole house surge protection here in the main breaker panel. Eaton is mfg.

If not already in your hands, recommend ARRL publication Grounding and Bonding for Radio Amateur (Amazon or ARRL). In my case, I worked thru the book before hooking anything up. There are lots of ways to get there, and well-done for thoughtful ground planning. Beg indulgence if I’m not interpreting or missing some of your details.

73,  Chuck   KC9QBY
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73,  Chuck  KC9QBY

K1KIM

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Re: Station/Antenna Grounding
« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2020, 05:33:25 PM »

Hi,

Plausible that concept is already in plan, yet I was thinking of single point grounding panel (SPGP) in shack.  Everything needs to go thru it including mains, CATV, Ethernet, coax switches mounted on panel, buss bars to which power supply, rigs, tuner are attached. That panel is bonded to ground rod where coax enters house with bonding to service entry ground.

We have whole house surge protection here in the main breaker panel. Eaton is mfg.

If not already in your hands, recommend ARRL publication Grounding and Bonding for Radio Amateur (Amazon or ARRL). In my case, I worked thru the book before hooking anything up. There are lots of ways to get there, and well-done for thoughtful ground planning. Beg indulgence if I’m not interpreting or missing some of your details.

73,  Chuck   KC9QBY

There is whole house surge protection.

I also have and read and the-read the book.

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