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Re: [TowerTalk] Grounding of cables to tower? (N3AE)

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Grounding of cables to tower? (N3AE)
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:46:20 -0700
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 10/19/2017 12:26 PM, jimlux wrote:
Interesting.. I'll have to go look up the history of that change. There must have been some problem.

NEC has ALWAYS prohibited more than one neutral to ground bond in a system, and has always required earth electrodes for every building. As you noted earlier, the addition of a transformer establishes a new system, where there must be a neutral to ground bond. I have great respect for those who produced and update NEC (although the section on Antennas is pretty dated, and seems focused solely on the possibility of wires falling on power lines).

As a member of the Standards Committee of the Audio Engineering Society, I've been part of many hundreds of discussions on the fine details and possible repercussions of almost every word in a Standard. Like the engineers who produce NEC, the AESSC includes membership from a very broad range of disciplines, and the resulting perspectives yields many "what if" scenarios. Likewise, as the sound system consultant to architects designing buildings, more "what if" scenarios. Things might have been very different if only such collaborative design and the right "what if" questions had been raised during the design meetings that put the generators at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in the basement.

Chicago learned this lesson 20 years ago when basement generators flooded after an accident on the Chicago River caused it to back up into downtown buildings. Cities in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Texas have all learned it after major hurricanes.

Bottom line is that good engineers (as well as business and political leaders) keep open minds and learn from history, and from each other.

73, Jim K9YC

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