[TowerTalk] Grounding of cables to tower? (N3AE)

[Jim Brown]

On 10/19/2017 12:26 PM, jimlux wrote:
> Interesting.. I'll have to go look up the history of that change. 
> There must have been some problem.

NEC has ALWAYS prohibited more than one neutral to ground bond in a 
system, and has always required earth electrodes for every building. As 
you noted earlier, the addition of a transformer establishes a new 
system, where there must be a neutral to ground bond. I have great 
respect for those who produced and update NEC (although the section on 
Antennas is pretty dated, and seems focused solely on the possibility of 
wires falling on power lines).

As a member of the Standards Committee of the Audio Engineering Society, 
I've been part of many hundreds of discussions on the fine details and 
possible repercussions of almost every word in a Standard. Like the 
engineers who produce NEC, the AESSC includes membership from a very 
broad range of disciplines, and the resulting perspectives yields many 
"what if" scenarios. Likewise, as the sound system consultant to 
architects designing buildings, more "what if" scenarios. Things might 
have been very different if only such collaborative design and the right 
"what if" questions had been raised during the design meetings that put 
the generators at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in the basement.

Chicago learned this lesson 20 years ago when basement generators 
flooded after an accident on the Chicago River caused it to back up into 
downtown buildings. Cities in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Texas 
have all learned it after major hurricanes.

Bottom line is that good engineers (as well as business and political 
leaders) keep open minds and learn from history, and from each other.

73, Jim K9YC