[TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding of tower

[K8RI]

On 5/10/2013 4:04 PM, K1TTT wrote:
> A corollary to this is:  There is no such thing as a ground for lightning.
>
> You can kind of get away with pouring a bit of household 60hz

I almost got killed doing that

The station, a Yaesu FT101B, was on the East end of the South side of 
the basement with a ground rod about 4' to the South.  The 40 m vertical 
with radials was about 50 - 75 tied to an 8' ground rod at the base 
feet West of the house.  The house electrical ground was about half way 
between. The soil was quite moist.

The radials laid on the ground and had about 4-5 inches bent 90 degrees 
at the ends.  It was spring and several of the radials had come loose 
and curled up.

I pulled one straight and knelt down to stick the end back into the 
ground.  Remember the other end connected to a ground rod which was 
connected to the rig through the braid.  Neutral connected to the house 
ground at the panel and the rig at the outlet.

When my knees touched the ground, it had me. My muscles just clamped up 
and I curled up. The only thing that saved me was when I curled up, I 
fell over backwards and my knees broke connection with the ground.  As 
soon as I was free I threw that wire<:-))

Unbeknownst to me there was an overly generous solder joint on the power 
connector. It looked like an over size Jones connector. The chassis side 
had a ball of solder on one pin that could touch the chassis if there 
was just a little side force on the power cord.

My Simpson showed just over a 100VAC from the ground rod and sticking 
the other lead in the ground as far out as it'd go which was about 6 feet.


73

Roger (K8RI)


into the
> ground, but don't count on it to work for a primary on a power line either!
>
> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
> web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Brown [mailto:jim at audiosystemsgroup.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding of tower
>
> On 5/10/2013 9:29 AM, George Dubovsky wrote:
>> 3. "RF ground system" is a perfectly good term and is accepted and
>> understood in the rf design community.
>
> I strongly disagree -- it has led to HUGE misunderstandings and TERRIBLE
> errors in the construction of equipment that are so widespread that they are
> accepted as the only way to do it, and are a major cause of hum, buzz, and
> RFI.  It causes people to think that ground rods are a desired part of an
> antenna system.
>
> It also causes people to think that separate grounds for RF, audio, and
> power are somehow a good idea. And it causes people to view a connection to
> earth as a cure for all ills, including, but not limited to, RFI, TVI, and
> antenna performance.  And that the earth is somehow a sink into which noise
> and RFI can be poured.
>
> What REALLY matters to the RF design community is keeping track of where the
> current flows, and that means ALL the current -- DC, audio, and RF
> -- on every cable.  Henry Ott says this quite poetically when he speaks of
> "the half of the schematic hidden behind the ground symbol."  Is the
> reference PCB layer under microstrip complete, or is it broken for a extra
> trace that wouldn't fit (or was forgotten) on the main layer?
> Does the cable shield go directly to the shielding enclosure, or does it go
> to a circuit trace to create a "Pin One Problem"  YOU may not have made
> these errors, but the vast majority of equipment is built with these faults.
>
> If you re-read my post, you will see that I wasn't objecting to the
> connection of the common point of a radial system to a ground rod.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
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