[TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding connection to tower legs

[Wes Stewart]

That's what is used around here.  The problem is with the prevalent thievery of 
copper wire, our power co-op uses aluminum from near ground level to the top of 
the pole.  They use a crimped connection, often overdone, and I've seen them 
where one wire (usually the aluminum one) breaks right at the crimp and then is 
a potential noise source.  The aluminum wire is attached to the pole with 
staples.  I've seen them driven so deeply that they cut the wire in two.

At one time when I was having a lot of power line noise they tried using barbed 
staples that someone sold them on.  These were copper plated steel and the 
copper eventually disappeared and left rusty steel behind.  Furthermore in the 
AZ WX with RH near zero sometimes, the poles shrink and the staples loosen anyway.

Wes  N7WS

  On 10/17/2017 9:22 AM, David Robbins wrote:
> That wire wrapped around the butt end of the utility pole is amazingly
> called a 'butt wrap' and is a common method of installing a ground at the
> base of a pole, there is no extra hardware, no driving a ground rod next to
> the pole which degrades its effectiveness anyway, and no maintenance of
> another junction.  Also the size of the ground is much bigger than a simple
> rod.  Note though that it is probably a better power fault ground than a
> single rod, but maybe not much better for lightning.
>
> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
> web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net:7373
>