[TowerTalk] Ground Rods

[David Gilbert]

I think there is danger in generalizing.  I live in very rocky terrain 
(check out my tower installation pics at ab7e.com) and if I'm lucky I 
can get about 75% of four foot rods to go in all the way no matter what 
I pound them in with.  Even then virtually all of them take a "skew 
path."  Eight foot rods have a 100% chance of stopping on a large chunk 
of granite before they get even close to being all the way in.  I 
suspect other hams in other locations have similar issues.

My only recourse was to put in more rods to ground my tower, and I built 
my own exothermic mold (standard type, not One-Shot variety) and bought 
a bunch of Cadweld powder on eBay so I could make as many wire-to-rod 
connections as I needed.  The biggest reservation I have is that I'm 
less likely to reach moist earth during our dry springtime with the 
shorter rods, but that's just something I have to live with.  No storms 
then anyway ...

73,
Dave   AB7E




On 11/30/2010 11:10 AM, Mark Robinson wrote:
> I put in 10 foot copper clad 5/8 ground rods around my tower. Most of them
> went in pretty easily..
>
> Mark N1UK
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Bookwalter"<n8dcj at yahoo.com>
> To:<towertalk at contesting.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, 30 November, 2010 12:43 PM
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Ground Rods
>
>
>> Ok , i have seen several discussions regarding what people are using for
>> ground
>> rods.... some use actual 5/8" ground rods , while others use 1/2" copper
>> pipe ,
>> thoughts on which is better ?
>>
>> also i was thinking about using 4ft ground rods instead of 8 footers , but
>> use
>> twice as many of them , it is much easier to drive the 4 footers  ,
>> thoughts ?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Dan N8DCJ
>>
>>
>>
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