Grounding question

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wwhitby

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I recently upgraded to General and my son is studying for his General now. We got a used Icom 735 HF radio and will be putting up a multi band dipole at the top of a pole in an inverted V configuration.

The shack is just inside the house near the electrical service delivery point, so that's not a problem to ground our radio and antenna tuner to the SDP grounding rod. The problem we have is the location of the dipole. The electrical SDP and ground rod is on the side of the house. The mast mounting the dipole has to go in the back near the house, just to have the dipole enclosed within the fenced in back yard and to have enough room for an HF dipole. The mast would be about 35 feet from the existing ground rod, around the corner of the house.

Since I can't mount the mast near the SDP, what I was planning on doing is to put another ground rod by the mast to ground the mast, coax, and lightning arrester, then another ground rod half way to the SDP since its over 20 feet and run heavy AWG ground wire to bound the new ground rods and the exist ground rod for the SDP.

How does this sound? Is there anything i'm missing?
 

mmckenna

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Sounds like it'll work.

You have to have all the grounds at the same potential, and you need to provide a short/easy path to ground for a strike or nearby strike.
Running at least one ground rod at the base of the antenna support would be wise. Another one half way will help, and having it all tied together to your service panel ground will meet the electric code requirements.

Don't forget that you need to ground all your station gear. Putting a ground buss/block at the radio and connecting that to the ground system will help.

Sounds like you are on the right track.
 

jim202

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I would hope that you have at least done a few searches both on here and on the internet about grounding for radio antennas and communications equipment.

I am not going to go into my normal, long winded dissertation about grounding. But I will point out that at a bare minimum, you really need to contact your house insurance company and ask the question to the person you have on the phone.

Grounding is important and you should not take any short cuts. But I will point out that if you ask 10 people the same question about grounding, you will probably end up with at least 12 answers on how it should be done.

Worked for a number of cellular companies over the years and they all do their grounding the same way with just some very minor differences.

The NEC (National Electrical Code) has some very clear rules on how grounding needs to be done.
 

prcguy

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Yes, follow the code and specifically article 810 of the NEC. Here is one of many pictorials on proper ways to ground an antenna to code: http://www.reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements_Reeve.pdf
prcguy


I would hope that you have at least done a few searches both on here and on the internet about grounding for radio antennas and communications equipment.

I am not going to go into my normal, long winded dissertation about grounding. But I will point out that at a bare minimum, you really need to contact your house insurance company and ask the question to the person you have on the phone.

Grounding is important and you should not take any short cuts. But I will point out that if you ask 10 people the same question about grounding, you will probably end up with at least 12 answers on how it should be done.

Worked for a number of cellular companies over the years and they all do their grounding the same way with just some very minor differences.

The NEC (National Electrical Code) has some very clear rules on how grounding needs to be done.
 

KC4RAF

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You're doing it the right way Warren. Many hams, cbers, and others who erect antennas, towers, masts, fail to connect to the main's electrical grounding rod(s), thus opening up a can of troubles.
Also Jim brings to the table the fact of the insurance companies. Here in Florida, the so-called lightning capitol of the U.S., some companies are strict about following the NEC and local codes. It never hurts to find out what their requirements are.
73s
 
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