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Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: ground,good or bad ?

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: ground,good or bad ?
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 11:22:15 -0700
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 3/19/2019 11:01 AM, Hans Hammarquist via TowerTalk wrote:
  Hi John,
I believe you have a close to ideal situation regarding grounding. I wouldn't 
be surprised if some grounding rods into the clay would work well at RF.

WRONG! A connection to mother earth does NOT make transmitting antennas work better. The earth is a big resistor -- connecting to it burns transmitter power. The ONLY reason for a connection to earth is lightning protection.  RX antennas are an exception -- many depend on a connection to ground.

Radials and "ground screens" serve two functions -- they provide a low resistance path for return current and the fields created by a vertical antenna, and the SHIELD those fields from the lossy earth.  K2AV's folded counterpoise provides the return path, but provides no shielding function.

I would just use a "nine tail" groundplane. I have used that extensively at 
Fied-days. I have about 10 wires, 10 feet long that I spread out around my tent as a 
ground. Never had a problem.
And it never did anything useful either.
(I use a short ground rod for the generator as you need a good ground at 60Hz 
for that.)
A short ground rod is not a good ground at 60 Hz, or at any other frequency.  A ground rod for the frame of a generator CAN reduce noise from the generator, but so can a good common mode choke on the AC cable.  The one we use is shown on page 23 of http://k9yc.com/RFI-Ham.pdf
I believe you have the right ground for a phased antenna and you will not need 
chicken wires to improve your ground.

I believe you need to study the ARRL Antenna Book and N6LF's website.

73, Jim K9YC

73 de,
Hans - N2JFS
-----Original Message-----
From: John <w5jmw@towerfarm.net>
To: TowerTalk@contesting.com <TowerTalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Sat, Mar 16, 2019 8:14 pm
Subject: [TowerTalk] ground,good or bad ?

I am wondering about nr of radials to run.I understand that over water you sometimes 
hurt things by adding radials over water…
At our new qth (3 yrs) I am finallyn putting up the vertical phased antennas for 80 meters.We live in an area 
that has clay down abt a foor to 6 inchs  below.Our water from ¼ in rain stays around for days.then 
the ground is moist for abt a week.We dug a trash burn pit abt 6 mos ago.Abt 6 ft deep by 10 ft…It is 
full of water..Our last rain was 4 sdays ago…it’s not draining well due to the clay.Is this 
considered a good ground? Are radials a good idea ?thanks,john w5jmw

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

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