[TowerTalk] grounding questions

Rick Bullon kc5ajx at hotmail.com
Wed Sep 24 06:32:57 EDT 2003


Hello All
I have been though the archives and found alot of info on grounding but I 
still have a few questions.

First let me describe what I am in the process of doing right now.
I have the ground rods in at the tower running from each tower leg ( tower 
is Rohn 25), 1 st rod is 8' out and the other 2 are 16' apart altogether 40' 
from the tower to the last ground rod in each direction. On the ground rods 
running toward the shack I have the ground wire running toward the trench 
for the coax run and then ground rods every 16' to the box outside the 
shack.

I have a metal box at the bottom of the tower and one outside the window of 
the shack ( I know I probably only need the one at the bottom of the tower 
but I want to be a safe as I can be as far as lightning).
Now my questions

In each box are lightning arrestors( ICE units) for the coax runs and the 
control lines. On each unit is a ground lug. Do I need to run wires from 
each of these lugs and then attach them to the lightning ground or are the 
units grounded though the metal boxes?

If the units are grounded thought the metal boxes  then can I tie all the 
grounds on the control lines to these lugs and free up and extra terminal on 
the arrestors to use for the other control line coming in?

These lugs don't look  big enough to use the #6 wire I using on the rest on 
the lightning ground. What size wire is recommended?

In the shack I have one #6 wire coming in that is grounded to a single 
separate ground rod out side. This is for the equipment grounds in the 
shack, again the ground terminals on all the equipment in the shack look to 
small to use this big wire. I was thinking would use a split copper bolt to 
attach smaller copper wires to this bigger wire is this the correct way?

One more dumb question when running the wires from the equipment grounds to 
the ground wire coming into the the shack do I run 1 wire from each piece to 
the main wire or connect them from 1 piece of equipment to another then from 
the last piece of equipment to the main wire?
I think the right way is each piece of equipment to the main wire.

I figure that since the ground wire coming from the tower to the shack is 
only a few feet from the single ground wire coming into the shack that I 
don't need to tie these together and I wrong here.

And before anyone brings it up yes the ground wire is going to continue to 
the same point that the ac and telco lines are grounded to
Thanks and 73
Rick
KC5AJX

_________________________________________________________________
Frustrated with dial-up? Get high-speed for as low as $29.95/month 
(depending on the local service providers in your area).  
https://broadband.msn.com



More information about the TowerTalk mailing list