TT:
When I worked for the local electric utility in PA we used stranded 4/0
galvanized steel wire as our ground conductors from substation structures and
fences posts onto a buried mat of the same conductor material. Fence gates
used galvanized braid of some significant size to connect to the ground mat.
No one wanted to steal that stuff and the gauge was needed to safely handle
100k+ Amps of 60 Hz fault current.
When I worked on a cellular phone project in Haiti in the late 90s, the
cells sites included solid copper ground conductors (gauge unknown) and 7/24
armed guards. Reportedly they had problems with stolen diesel generator fuel,
too.
Finally, I've read about some wireless operators painting the visible
copper ground leads emerging from inside the equipment huts with bitumen to
make them less obvious/attractive to the casual observer.
FWIW.
73 de
Gene Smar AD3F
-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Wes
Stewart
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:58 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding connection to tower legs
That's what is used around here. The problem is with the prevalent thievery of
copper wire, our power co-op uses aluminum from near ground level to the top of
the pole. They use a crimped connection, often overdone, and I've seen them
where one wire (usually the aluminum one) breaks right at the crimp and then is
a potential noise source. The aluminum wire is attached to the pole with
staples. I've seen them driven so deeply that they cut the wire in two.
At one time when I was having a lot of power line noise they tried using barbed
staples that someone sold them on. These were copper plated steel and the
copper eventually disappeared and left rusty steel behind. Furthermore in the
AZ WX with RH near zero sometimes, the poles shrink and the staples loosen
anyway.
Wes N7WS
On 10/17/2017 9:22 AM, David Robbins wrote:
> That wire wrapped around the butt end of the utility pole is amazingly
> called a 'butt wrap' and is a common method of installing a ground at
> the base of a pole, there is no extra hardware, no driving a ground
> rod next to the pole which degrades its effectiveness anyway, and no
> maintenance of another junction. Also the size of the ground is much
> bigger than a simple rod. Note though that it is probably a better
> power fault ground than a single rod, but maybe not much better for lightning.
>
> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
> web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net:7373
>
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