[TowerTalk] Fwd: ground,good or bad ?

[Jim Brown]

On 3/19/2019 11:01 AM, Hans Hammarquist via TowerTalk wrote:
>   Hi John,
> I believe you have a close to ideal situation regarding grounding. I wouldn't be surprised if some grounding rods into the clay would work well at RF.

WRONG! A connection to mother earth does NOT make transmitting antennas 
work better. The earth is a big resistor -- connecting to it burns 
transmitter power. The ONLY reason for a connection to earth is 
lightning protection.  RX antennas are an exception -- many depend on a 
connection to ground.

Radials and "ground screens" serve two functions -- they provide a low 
resistance path for return current and the fields created by a vertical 
antenna, and the SHIELD those fields from the lossy earth.  K2AV's 
folded counterpoise provides the return path, but provides no shielding 
function.

> I would just use a "nine tail" groundplane. I have used that extensively at Fied-days. I have about 10 wires, 10 feet long that I spread out around my tent as a ground. Never had a problem.
And it never did anything useful either.
> (I use a short ground rod for the generator as you need a good ground at 60Hz for that.)
A short ground rod is not a good ground at 60 Hz, or at any other 
frequency.  A ground rod for the frame of a generator CAN reduce noise 
from the generator, but so can a good common mode choke on the AC 
cable.  The one we use is shown on page 23 of http://k9yc.com/RFI-Ham.pdf
> I believe you have the right ground for a phased antenna and you will not need chicken wires to improve your ground.

I believe you need to study the ARRL Antenna Book and N6LF's website.

73, Jim K9YC

> 73 de,
> Hans - N2JFS
>   
>   
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John <w5jmw at towerfarm.net>
> To: TowerTalk at contesting.com <TowerTalk at contesting.com>
> Sent: Sat, Mar 16, 2019 8:14 pm
> Subject: [TowerTalk] ground,good or bad ?
>
> I am wondering about nr of radials to run.I understand that over water you sometimes hurt things by adding radials over water…
> At our new qth (3 yrs) I am finallyn putting up the vertical phased antennas for 80 meters.We live in an area that has clay down abt a foor to 6 inchs  below.Our water from ¼ in rain stays around for days.then the ground is moist for abt a week.We dug a trash burn pit abt 6 mos ago.Abt 6 ft deep by 10 ft…It is full of water..Our last rain was 4 sdays ago…it’s not draining well due to the clay.Is this considered a good ground? Are radials a good idea ?thanks,john w5jmw
>
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