[TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding of tower

[Jim Brown]

On 5/10/2013 8:58 AM, George Dubovsky wrote:
> In the case of a radial system on or just below the surface of the earth,
> one or many ground rods connected anywhere to the rf ground system should
> not hurt,

Please remove the phrase "RF ground system" from your vocabulary -- it 
is a false concept, and leads to confusion.

Rudy Severns, N6LF, has done a lot of work studying radial systems for 
verticals, especially for the lower bands.  Rudy has shown that an earth 
connection can significantly degrade the performance of an elevated 
radial system. I suspect he might agree that adding an earth connection 
to the feedpoint of a dense on-ground radial system would not hurt, and 
radials connected a grounded tower certainly have that condition . Earth 
connections elsewhere in the radial system are a bad idea, because they 
disturb (in a bad way) the current distribution along the radial. Rudy's 
published work does a great job of explaining why.

73, Jim K9YC