[TowerTalk] Station Ground

[Michael Tope]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "N6KJ" <n6kj at yahoo.com>
  Also, how

> do people attach the wires to the bus-bar or
> ground rod?  Bolts?  U-Clamps?  Solder?  Any
> advice would be appreciated.  
> 

I got a long piece of 1" copper water pipe and 
put wooden dowel rod inside. Then I drilled holes
all the way through the pipe every few inches for 
#8 machine screws. The dowel rod keeps the 
pipe from deforming too much when I tighten the 
screws down. Wires from the rigs attach to the 
pipe using crimp lugs under the #8 screw heads. 
The whole thing is held to the back of the operating 
desk with a couple of U-brackets.

If you want a really low-inductance connection to
the copper pipe, you can take a piece of copper
sheet and taper it like a trapezoid and drill three
or four holes in it, one on the narrow end to go under 
the small lug on the rig and two or three on the wide 
end to attach firmly to the copper pipe. This is 
probably overkill, however. The main purpose of the 
station buss bar is electrical safety (and perhaps
minimizing audio frequency ground loops). For RF 
in-the-shack issues, I have found the best thing is to 
bring all the cables thru a metal wall panel  and then 
connect the wall panel to a good RF ground (ground 
rod and some radials right outside the panel entrance 
point). This will help keep any stray RF on your
feedlines from being conducted into the shack and
on to your equipment chassis. 
 
73 de Mike, W4EF................