[TowerTalk] Grounding Multiple Buildings

[Jim Lux]

On 9/15/14, 7:09 AM, David Jordan wrote:
> Here is how the NAVY would perform the grounding:
> http://www.hnsa.org/doc/radio/index.htm
>
> -
How the navy would do it *in 1946*.
And, there's actually nothing in there about grounding, or electrical 
wiring practices. The antennas they talk about are dipoles, for the most 
part.

In general, old documents aren't always a good source of "good 
construction and engineering practice". There has been substantial 
change in grounding, bonding, transient suppression knowledge and 
practice in the last 70 years, particularly when it comes to safety.

This is not to say that information in old publications is actually 
wrong, but that it might be incomplete or inappropriate in view of 
today's practices.  A nice example is old versions of the ARRL handbook 
which recommend connecting 0.1 uF capacitors between power line and 
chassis for filtering. Today, this would be considered very bad 
practice: capacitor failure would lead to a potential line/chassis 
short, leakage currents (0.1 uf = 5 mA @ 120V) that will trip a GFCI, etc.