Best way to ground a random wire antenna?

[Airdorn]

What's better, driving a stake into the ground right outside the house and running the Neg side of the random wire antenna input to it, or running the Neg side to the home electrical ground, or the cold water pipe of the water heater?

 

[GROL]

Do not use a separate ground than the one for the house if you are going to ground the other antenna connection. If the two ground rods are not tied together there can be a difference of potential between them and cause there to be a voltage across the receiver and the house electrical socket it may be plugged into which could fry the radio. If you get across those two grounds it may fry you.

 

[prcguy]

Yes on the above post, NEC requires any additional ground rods you install must be bonded to the main house ground with 6ga copper wire minimum. You might describe more about this random wire antenna, is it a random length of wire going to the center conductor of some coax or will it terminate at a tuner in the shack or a balun/matching transformer outside???

 

[Airdorn]

It is a random length wire going to one side of a 9:1 balun thingy... the other side is marked GND and I have it attached to the cover plate screw of a receptacle nearby. I can really hear an improvement in reception when that grounding wire is attached. Anyway the other side is an SMA connector. I have an adapter that goes to F and RG-8X coax that goes to my SDR/Shortwave radio.

 

[prcguy]

Using a 9:1 is a good idea to help tame the extreme impedance swing over a wide range of frequencies at HF. That type of setup will use the coax as part of the antenna and grounding the 9:1 balun can give different results depending on the installation. Sometimes grounding as you describe will bring in more noise that is riding on the AC wiring in the house. Sometimes grounding the transformer improves reception.

The ground point on the transformer is there for you to experiment with for best reception and there is no right or wrong way, its whatever works best. At my location grounding a 9:1 type antenna system usually increases my noise floor.

It is a random length wire going to one side of a 9:1 balun thingy... the other side is marked GND and I have it attached to the cover plate screw of a receptacle nearby. I can really hear an improvement in reception when that grounding wire is attached. Anyway the other side is an SMA connector. I have an adapter that goes to F and RG-8X coax that goes to my SDR/Shortwave radio.

 

[GROL]

It is a random length wire going to one side of a 9:1 balun thingy... the other side is marked GND and I have it attached to the cover plate screw of a receptacle nearby. I can really hear an improvement in reception when that grounding wire is attached. Anyway the other side is an SMA connector. I have an adapter that goes to F and RG-8X coax that goes to my SDR/Shortwave radio.

If you are using a 9:1 balun, you can usually do without connecting anything to ground at all. I use a 9:1 balun for end fed wire Amateur Radio antennas and use a short piece of wire for the counterpoise to the ground connector on the balun. Length of counterpoise is not critical. Just a few feet of wire stretched out will do. As prcguy mentioned, you may get more noise connecting to that outlet screw.