Jim,
I have had pretty good luck just going down to Checker or
Autozone and getting the short battery ground jumper to use for
this connection. These are large, flexible, insulated conductors
that are protected from the elements and already have the bolt
lug connectors attached at both ends. They sell several lengths.
Use the shortest one that will make the span in your application.
Use more than one in parallel if you are worried about
inductance.
Eric
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
>Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 17:12:17 -0800 (PST)
>From: "James L. Johnson" <jjjohnson@saiph.hpl.hp.com>
>
> I hope this isn't one of the topics that gets repeated so
>often that people are bored with it. I was talking to a friend
>about grounding my mobile antenna mount to my vehicle and my
>thought was to get a wide braided strap to go from the mount to
>the truck. I assumed that I would get a low-inductance,
>low-resistance connection due to the physical dimensions of the
>conductor (large surface area). He suggested that I might not,
>due to the crowding of current near the edges of the strap,
>caused by like charges repelling each other in the flat area. A
>round wire doesn't have this problem because the current is
>equally distributed around the surface of the conductor (skin
>effect) and there is no bunching due to an odd shape. So my
>question is: what is the optimum shape for the conductor making
>the "ground" connection between the mobile antenna mount and the
>vehicle? Does it really matter much since mobile antennas are
>such low-efficiency devices that I wouldn't be able to tell the
>difference anyway? I'm wondering what the experts might say
>... folks like Steve (K7LXC) and Tom (W8JI) and the others who
>have much more experience than me.
>
>Thanks,
>Jim W6SC
>jjohnson@hpl.hp.com
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