[TowerTalk] Another GROUNDING question.

[N6CW@aol.com]

I have been reading with great interest all the comments about grounding a 
station. My question deals with grounding when it is not possible to have a 
short ground from the rig to ground. My station is located on the second 
floor of my house. My current ground system consists of a single 5x2 foot 
copper sheet bolted on the back of my desk which all electronics are grounded 
to, and conected to, a single 3 foot long #6 wire running through the floor 
to a copper cold water pipe directly under the floor and in the garage 
ceiling. This cold water pipe runs all over the house and probaly does not 
get into the ground for 50 feet or so. 

The good news is that I do not have any problems with RF getting into my 
equipment. I do have some problems with RFI into phones and on the low bands 
I do have some audio rectification in the TV set. And when I force my antenna 
(CC X7) to work on 18 and 24 MHz I have probelms I dont have with it on the 
resonant bands. Probably this has nothing to do with a poor ground BUT I FEEL 
like this ground is not good enough. 

So what do people do with an above ground level shack do to insure they have 
the best ground possible? I realize I am talking about two different ground 
situations here. An RF ground and a single point station ground. Since I dont 
have RF getting into my equipment possibly this is an adequate ground for 
this purpose. And since I dont have any way to shorten the length of the 
ground cable/pipe then maybe I have all I can expect?

Comments appreciated. 

Terry/N6CW

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