[TowerTalk] Radio location in relation to antenna

[Ed Juge]

Hi, Terry...

Although I'd much rather be on the ground floor, we just moved into our 
second house where my shack is located on the second floor, almost directly 
beneath two antennas.  Not glowing in the dark yet, turning green or 
anything like that.  What negative health issues I have either preceded 
these locations or are attributable to getting a few years 
older.  (Theoretically I suppose you'll be a bit close to your antennas for 
comfort but for the first 40 years of my ham career we didn't know the 
supposed dangers of being too close to an RF source and I never knew anyone 
to suffer from it.  Do you have a spare lead suit laying around?)

In both cases, I ran a heavy, solid ground lead (#6) down to an 8' ground 
rod directly below the operating position.  In the current case, I also 
connected to the house electrical ground (conveniently close) which is a 
pipe I'll bet isn't more than three feet in the ground. For cables going 
outside I have a 4" conduit through the house wall which makes an immediate 
but gentle 90-degree turn toward the ground, so the distance is minimized.

There is a 15ft. mast about 6ft. over my head which supports a 2m/70cm 
vertical (100 watts out on 2m) and the center of my 80/40 Inverted Vee.  My 
other antenna is a Hy-Gain Hy-Tower in the back yard, probably 50-60ft. 
away horizontally.  The SWR on both antennas is quite low over my operating 
frequency range, so there have been no problems with stray RF. (Well, 
actually, when I key up, I turn on the touch light built into my wife's 
china cabinet directly below the transmitters.)   Once, in the other house, 
I had some RF on the mic which was eventually traced to a coax jumper with 
a bad connection on the shield side.

I don't run 'em 10% of the time but I do have a 1.5KW TenTec amp and two 
30L1's worth about 500 W each.

If you have a problem on one or two bands, you should be able to create an 
artificial RF ground by stringing a 1/4-wave radial from the transmitter 
along the wall or floor of your shack.

The other option, of course, would be to have an electrician re-route those 
30-amp circuits to your present shack location.  The cost probably depends 
on what's common in your geographical area, but I'd be surprised if it cost 
much over $75 for both.  It might be worth 75 bucks not to have to haul the 
amp upstairs :-).

Hope this helps.

Good luck... Ed, W5EJ

At 08:09 PM 10/17/99 -0500, thaxton@ptgroup.com wrote:


>     I am considering moving my radio gear out of the lower level of
>my house to the upper level.  My reason is that I can convert a
>couple of 30 amp circuts over to 220V I had installed to run my
>computer gear when I first started my company.  I don't need them
>anymore.
>
>     The new location would put my gear about 15 feet under the roof
>mount antenna I have just installed.  I also have a couple of dipoles
>layed across this section of the roof as well.  I would be running an
>amp rated at 1.5kw if I decide to relocate and fire up a 220V circut.
>
>     So what kind of RF problems would or could I be setting myself
>up to experience? Would the proximity to the antenna pose a
>problem? What should I consider if I do this? Should I maintain a
>larger distance(55 feet now) from my antenna's such as I have
>now?  What precautions, RF wise, should I be considering?  Will I
>glow in the dark? :)
>
>Any feedback or comments would be most appreciated.
>
>Don
>N0FGK
>
>
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-------------------------------------------
Ed Juge
phone: 817.291.0733
email:  ed_juge@zianet.com
======================

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