[TowerTalk] RF Surge Suppressor at Base of Tower or Shack SPG or Both ?

[Gary Schafer]

You need to have the tower bonded to your house electric ground for NEC
compliance. 

To the question of the AC entrance on the other side of the house, the
easiest way to deal with this is to run an AC line from your service
entrance panel for your radios over to where your tower lines come into the
house. Place AC surge protectors on that line as close to the antenna cables
as you can. Of course bond the box that the suppressors are in to the box or
panel that contains your antenna suppressors.
Then power all of your radio equipment ONLY from that box with the AC
suppressors in it. This way you have a true SINGLE POINT GROUND for your
equipment. 

73
Gary  K4FMX

> -----Original Message-----
> From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On 
> Behalf Of Shawn Donley
> Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2021 1:14 PM
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: [TowerTalk] RF Surge Suppressor at Base of Tower or 
> Shack SPG or Both ?
> 
> Fellow TowerTalkers
> 
> Where should the coax surge suppressors go?  At the base of 
> the tower or at the shack entry box or both?
> 
> I have my tower coax grounded at the tower base.  Just put in 
> a new underground run of hardline to the shack entrance which 
> is about 130 feet from the tower.  I have new metal boxes at 
> the tower and at the shack entrance.  So where should the 
> coax arrestors go?   I'm thinking at the shack entrance box 
> since the hardline inductance would block some of the surge 
> and stretch it out in time, making the suppressor more 
> effective at the shack entrance.  The shack entrance box is 
> bonded to the tower by a run of #4 solid copper and a number 
> of 8 foot ground rods along the way.  I have additional 
> radial ground runs coming off the tower with ground rods 
> every 16 ft or so.   Unfortunately the house service entrance 
> is on the opposite side of the house 50 ft away from the 
> shack entrance, but I plan to run #4 to it as well, which 
> raises the question of effective bonds.  Page 6.11 of 
> Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur (first addition) 
> says that a bonding run of 40 to 50 ft will have too m
>  uch inductance for an effective bond (at lightning energy 
> frequencies) but goes on to say MIL-HDBK-419A shows towers 
> bonded to building grounds up to 200 ft away.   Big 
> difference between 5o ft and 200 ft.
> 
> tnx
> N3AE
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