[TowerTalk] Earth Ground: How good is good enough

[Artek Manuals]

Jim et all

One of my heroes of the late 20th century was Ed Demming a noted 
statistician ( with a degree in EE of all things) who changed the way 
the world (most notably the US and Japan in the 70's and 80's) looked at 
and tried to use statistics to solve mass production quality problems 
through design of experiments techniques. . One of Ed's famous sayings 
was "If you cant say it with numbers..you don't understand the problem".

So I will say it AGAIN. What I want to do is measure the ground 
resistance of a multi ground rod system in VERY POOR soils in my case. 
WHY I want to know this number or what I intend to use it for IS NOT 
relevant to the discussion at this point. Please don't get your cart 
before my horse.

No where in my original query did it indicate that this was for a 
vertical antenna system ...but to clarify IT IS NOT. I followed N6LF's 
work on measuring soil conductivity and did a lot of measurement to 
conclude that my soil is very poor, in the range of .0015. But for the 
record laying out radial fields in a jungle with a pure quartz floor is 
not really practical and I went to elevated radials a long time ago.

I will happily spend the $10 if N0AX's book ...IF...it talks about 
actual measurement techniques for deriving the resistance of a ground 
system composed of several ground rods at any given frequency. Those of 
you who recommended the book please verify for me that it talks about 
actual measurement techniques WHY I want to know is not relevant to the 
question.

What I want to do is to be able to describe the problem with numbers 
using verifiable measurement techniques at different frequencies.

Maybe I am writing an article for next year's April issue of QST for 
building a 50 ohm dummy load using an array ground rods outside my 
shack  window. Maybe I am just curious.

Dave
NR1DX




On 9/9/2021 2:41 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
> On 9/9/2021 9:41 AM, Artek Manuals wrote:
>> I 've read a lot of articles over the years about ground systems and 
>> how to build a good one. Most of them ignore actual soil conditions 
>> and few talk about the differences between "DC/AC (Low 
>> Freq)/Lightning" and RF ground vs frequency
>
> N0AX's ARRL book on the topic is excellent. Also, these two links may 
> help. The first addresses grounding and bonding, the second about 
> radial/countepoise systems for verticals.
>
> http://k9yc.com/GroundingAndAudio.pdf
> http://k9yc.com/160MPacificon.pdf
>
> Some important points. The ONLY reasons for an earth connection are 1) 
> lightning safety, and 2) to make certain RX antennas work (Beverages 
> and some loops. An earth connection has NOTHING to do with noise 
> reduction, and it does NOT make TX antennas work better. That's the 
> function of radials/counterpoise.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
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-- 
Dave Manuals at ArtekManuals.com www.ArtekManuals.com

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