[TowerTalk] Shack ground

[Mark Spencer]

I concur, personally I'm satisfied with a continous piece where possible (ie. one piece of wire is run thru the various lugs as opposed to being spliced) of number 3 copper wire run outside the house.   When I see ham shacks with separate low impedance RF grounds I can't help but think about what might happen if there was a serious ground fault and the only bond between the home electrical system ground and the low impedance RF ground was via a ground wire in a piece of 14/2 romex that ran thru the house to the electrical outlet that powers the ham gear.  



----- Original Message ----
From: jimlux <jimlux at earthlink.net>
To: Mark Spencer <mspencer12345 at yahoo.ca>
Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
Sent: Fri, June 18, 2010 3:10:10 PM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Shack ground

Mark Spencer wrote:
>> NEC cares about "don't burn down the building" and "don't
>> kill/injure the occupants".  Disasters like the MGM Grand hotel
>> fire and swimming pool shocks feature a lot in the discussions of
>> code makers when talking about Article 250.
> 
> 
> Don't burn down the building and don't kill / injure the occupants
> sound like a reasonable design criteria to me for the grounding of my
> amateur radio instalation.  The protection of my amateur radio gear
> takes a distant third place to protecting the lives of my family
> memebrs and our home.  Having a separate "RF ground" or antenna
> system ground that is not electrically connected to the electrical
> service ground by a dedicated ground wire would be a non starter for
> me.
> 

Yep..

But you don't need to connect the two with 4/0 welding cable or 3"
copper pipe, either.  As you say, "safety" is different than "equipment protection"