[TowerTalk] Getting a GOOD ground on a Tower

[Dave Anderson, K4SV]

Hi guys,

Just moved to my new QTH with lots of land and no real
restrictions.  I live ON a hill so my towers could be
subject to potentially more hits than normal.  

Have a 90 foot crankup and two 5 foot crankup towers
up.  Want to keep the lightning energy mostly
dissipated at the tower.  I plan at least 5 ground
radials for the 100' and 4 for the 50' footers.
Looking for a good way to ground the tower to earth. 
Without the gory details on all the common grounding
to and from the shack I want to know what works well
for you at the tower.

I have read the Polyphaser lightning manual and
everything else I could find.  So here is my question.

When grounding a tower, assuming 8 foot ground rods on
the ground radials every 16 foot, what should I use
for the conductor.

I see Polyphaser recommends flat copper strap 1.5 or 3
inches in width using their copper compression device
allowing connection of the strap to a 5/8" copper clad
rod.  I would use the polyphaser stainless steel
special hose clamps to interface the copper strap to
the galvanized tower legs making a clean low
inductance path directly to ground with no corrosion.

An alternate method my buddy tells me is to use 3/0
bare stranded copper cable Cad welded to the rods with
the same rod spacing.  A problem arises on how to
connect the cable to the tower using Bronze
terminals?? 

The cost is about a wash so I am interested to know if
you have experience with this situation how would you
do it.  Lightning is coming, I need to ground the
stuff soon.

Thanks in advance,

Dave...

Dave...

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