[TowerTalk] Connecting Tower to Ground Rod

[GARY HUBER]

When I was working in telecommunications for a major insurance group,  we 
had both ground rings around multiple building complexes,  air terminals 
tied to building steel at 197 feet AGL, ground busses on the top floor tied 
to the ground mat (under the basement floors) using pairs of 400 MCM cable 
and all raceways, ducts, and piping bonded to building steel and the ground 
mat. One significant issue with distant towers or buildings with connecting 
signal conductors is voltage differential and propagation delay.  In one 
seven building complex (for 5000 employees) each building was at least 200 
feet per side, and five stories tall, with one building the aforementioned 
197 foot tower.

If I had a tower 190 feet away with coaxial cable and rotor control leading 
to the shack, I 'd ground it, bond it, and put ICE protection on the coax 
and control conductors as they entered the ground window.  My tower is less 
than ten feet from the ground window (built into a basement window) and is 
bonded to a ground rod in the bottom of the tower base, an external ground 
rod near the base, the ground window, a ground rod in two sump wells, and 
the electrical system ground.

YMMV....

73 ES DX,
Gary -- AB9M

Re: [TowerTalk] Connecting Tower to Ground Rod
from [Pete Smith N4ZR] [Permanent Link][Original]
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Connecting Tower to Ground Rod
From: Pete Smith N4ZR <n4zr at contesting.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 08:09:40 -0400

Does this standard apply even if, as in my case, the tower is 190 feet
from the house entrance? Does it need to be a direct, dedicated
connection, or could a hardline shield, for example, be used for the tower
to house electrical service ground connection. In cross section, even
LDF4-50A is a lot beefier than #6.

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