[TowerTalk] Grounding the coax

[Alan NV8A]

I must be getting old, Gene. I looked back and saw that I had already 
marked that previous message of yours for further attention but then 
forgot that the subject had been raised at all.

73

Alan NV8A


On 11/03/05 11:38 pm ersmar at comcast.net tossed the following ingredients 
into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

>      I ran into the same issues when installing my coax grounds on my tower.  The most vexing to me was the price for commercial straps.  So I devised my own using copper flashing and posted here on TT at:  http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/Towertalk/2005-10/msg00778.html .  (Make sure you paste the entire URL into your browser.)
> 
>      One significant advantage (to my way of thinking) to this approach to shield grounding is that you don't introduce another pair of potential failure points - the two PL-259s - into the coax system.  

>>In his articles on lightning protection in QST in 2002, Ron Block KB2UYT 
>>emphasizes the need for grounding the coax at the top and bottom of the 
>>tower (and perhaps at intermediate points, depending on the height of 
>>the tower). I doubt that anybody will argue with this, but the question 
>>is how?
>>
>>Polyphaser sells expensive kits for grounding the coax: hefty 
>>semicircular hunks of copper that are clamped around the coax shield 
>>after removing its outer covering, then grounded to the tower by wide 
>>copper straps. Of course waterproofing is then applied to the coax where 
>>the outer covering was removed.
>>
>>But would simply interposing a barrel connector and securing a ground 
>>wire to that with, say, a hose clamp, then connecting that ground wire 
>>to the tower be significantly worse? Again, of course, the section with 
>>the barrel conenctor and PL-259s (or whatever) would have to be well 
>>sealed against the weather.