[TowerTalk] Unique RFI/Grounding system

Mark Pride mpride at us.ibm.com
Sun Jun 1 22:13:03 EDT 2003





Any fellow TTers recall reading the article years back (think in Ham Radio
Magazine?) about taking advantage of the concrete in the basement floor to
create a capacitor that provides a high frequency path to ground for
RFI/TVI suppression?  Built a shack in the basement years back where I took
the suggestions of the author and placed about 50 sq. ft. of conductive
material flat on the surface of the concrete then built a floor over it
(2X4, plywood with insulation) to hold it down and ran a wide conductor to
this surface and ultimately connected to the station ground.  Although I
did not do much comparison work (conventional grounding in the shack
(single point ground) vs. connection to this conductive surface under the
floor), I did experience a pretty quiet environment during multi
transmitter operation.  The interstation interference was very good and now
looking to re-create this method again or read the article again to
reconfirm the value points of such an installation.  The claim was that by
using the capacitor created by taking advantage of the dielectric
associated with  the concrete worked to make a nice low pF value capacitor
that could shunt off high frequency energy, reducing TVI or RFI.

My guess is this article appeared in the amateur press 15 years ago.

Would appreciate any leads for this article.  Thanks!

Regards,

Mark, K1RX



More information about the TowerTalk mailing list