[TowerTalk] Ground System

[Gary Schafer]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:towertalk-
> bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jim Brown
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:39 PM
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground System
> 
> On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:38:51 -0500, Gary Schafer wrote:
> 
> >A great deal of lightning energy is
> >connected to earth by capacitance in any ground system. Yes a DC (bare
> wire)
> >connection would be better and help more with the low frequency energy
> >coupling.
> 
> You might want to do some calcs (on the capacitive reactance of a big
> radial
> system) before you say that a DC ground is BETTER. Having a DC connection
> in
> addition to the capacitive coupling IS better, and is, in fact, required
> by
> most building codes and common sense. But it is in parallel with the
> capacitance, and most electrode grounds have a lot more resistance to
> "earth"
> that you might think. Indeed, the inductance of the earth connection
> dominates
> the impedance at a surprisingly low frequency.
> 
> 73,
> 
> Jim Brown K9YC

I thought that by saying that "a DC (bare wire) connection would be better
and help more with the low frequency energy coupling" would be taken to mean
that it would be better than just the capacitive coupling of an insulated
cable by itself for a ground system. 
It would also seem that saying that capacitive coupling plays an important
role in a ground system would imply that a DC ground by itself does not do
the job.

73
Gary  K4FMX