Towertalk
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [TowerTalk] Mot R36 related to NUMBER of installed ground

To: "Steve, W3AHL" <w3ahl@att.net>, <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Mot R36 related to NUMBER of installed ground
From: "Jeff" <keepwalking188@ac0c.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2017 20:51:27 -0500
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
One of the docs that refers to the 50/75 is the Ham Radio Grounding doc. On fresh look they say the radial should be 50-75' in length referring to the 50' as "minimum". So I guess that makes the basic radial construct assuming 8' rods to be a radial of 48' with 3 rods at 16, 32 and 48' spacing from the base.

There is not much in the way of references in either document (Mot or the Polyphasers) which provide optimal layouts for a given set of radials. One could intuit 3 such radial sets for a total of 9 per tower.

73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie

-----Original Message----- From: Steve, W3AHL
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 3:49 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Mot R36 related to NUMBER of installed ground

The Polyphaser document is: “Lightning Protection & Grounding Solutions for Communication Sites” by Ken Rand, copyright 2000. There is no mention of the maximum distance of ground rods from a tower. However, for rocky sites where ground rods are not possible and a radial grounding field is laid on or just below the surface, the recommendation is that the radials be no more than 75’ long and no less than 50’. More radials are added in parallel from the base of the tower to achieve the desired impedance, while maintaining the desired fast transient response time of the grounding system.

The same principle is implied for ground rod installations in the diagrams and calculations – more parallel runs from the tower base are better. And more short ground rods are better than fewer long ones due to the impedance of the rod.

I couldn’t find the complete PDF document online during a recent search, although there are chapters from the document on PolyPhaser’s web site as white papers.

It’s an excellent reference for lightning protection systems.

Steve, W3AHL
-----------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2017 11:58:40 -0500
From: "Jeff" <keepwalking188@ac0c.com>
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Mot R36 related to NUMBER of installed ground
rods

In one of the Polyphaser documents they talk about the rise time and length
of a strike duration.  Forget the details but the conclusion was that rods
further out than about 50' would not be effective because the strike would
be over before the outlying rods came into play.

If that's true then it seems there is an implied maximum density of the
field based on the 50' maximum radius for rods and the 2x rod length
spacing.

73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie
...snip..
_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>