Grounding your scanner question

[maxxkatt]

I used to have a Yaesu FRG-770 10 years ago that had a really bad problem with electrical noise in my home. Was advised to get it good ground buy burying wires attached to a 8 foot grounding spike with in a radial pattern of 6' spokes connected and buried about 10 inches deep in the ground about 30 feet away from the house. Worked like a charm. Eliminated all the electrical interference coming from the house.

I have a SDS-100 coming this week. Is there any way to connect this ground to the SDS-100 or the Discone antenna to maybe help on electrical interference?
Where would I connect the ground? Clamp it to the ground of the PL-259 connector? Or do modern scanners like the SDS-100 not need this extra help?

 

[jonwienke]

Grounding is to protect from lightning and static discharge damage, not to fix interference. If your house electric service is grounded properly, grounding the antenna will have minimal effect on reception.

 

[prcguy]

Grounding as you describe can in some cases reduce noise, but usually it doesn't do anything. Noise does not automatically go to ground when a path is provided. I've added additional grounding in countless installs and personally have never seen a reduction in noise. Moving your antenna away from noise sources like computers, switching power supplies and treating your feedline with the proper ferrite mix is a known way to reduce noise pickup.

Otherwise you should always ground your antenna per NEC, article 810 for human safety.

I used to have a Yaesu FRG-770 10 years ago that had a really bad problem with electrical noise in my home. Was advised to get it good ground buy burying wires attached to a 8 foot grounding spike with in a radial pattern of 6' spokes connected and buried about 10 inches deep in the ground about 30 feet away from the house. Worked like a charm. Eliminated all the electrical interference coming from the house.

I have a SDS-100 coming this week. Is there any way to connect this ground to the SDS-100 or the Discone antenna to maybe help on electrical interference?
Where would I connect the ground? Clamp it to the ground of the PL-259 connector? Or do modern scanners like the SDS-100 not need this extra help?

 

[merlin]

Never hurts to ground and have some form of lightning arrest. Noise still gets in and HF has its caveats with it. You get above 70 Mhz it is not so bad. Antennas like discone have no direct ground but they can pick up even weak signals. Often enough to bring them out of the noise floor.
Preamps at the antenna help a lot, but they need less than 1 Db of noise themselves. 10 to 20 Db of gain works very well.
Your discone should mount to a metal pipe and that is what should be well grounded. Out of that, through a grounded lightning arrester then to a preamp .I use a 15 Db gain Scientific Atlanta Multimedia drop amp (grounded) with .06 Db noise. then the expensive Adrews RG58 heliax into the shack. Right now, plugged into my chap Chinese SDR dongle and makes a huge difference in signal to noise ratio.
Into a scanner like SDS-100 should get you everything you are going to hear.
Again, won't hurt to ground it but not mandatory.

 

[TailGator911]

My Uncle Alden had the old timer's method - a 2X4 nailed to the wall, and for every outside antenna feed he had a metal capped fruit jar nailed to the 2X4 with the bottom glass of the jars removed. When bad weather was imminent he would switch to his indoor antenna farm and put the outside antenna coaxial ends in the fruit jars. There ya go. Grounded.

 

[maxxkatt]

Never hurts to ground and have some form of lightning arrest. Noise still gets in and HF has its caveats with it. You get above 70 Mhz it is not so bad. Antennas like discone have no direct ground but they can pick up even weak signals. Often enough to bring them out of the noise floor.
Preamps at the antenna help a lot, but they need less than 1 Db of noise themselves. 10 to 20 Db of gain works very well.
Your discone should mount to a metal pipe and that is what should be well grounded. Out of that, through a grounded lightning arrester then to a preamp .I use a 15 Db gain Scientific Atlanta Multimedia drop amp (grounded) with .06 Db noise. then the expensive Adrews RG58 heliax into the shack. Right now, plugged into my chap Chinese SDR dongle and makes a huge difference in signal to noise ratio.
Into a scanner like SDS-100 should get you everything you are going to hear.
Again, won't hurt to ground it but not mandatory.

Thanks, gives me a direction to go to if I think I need to try and improve things. Waiting on my SDS100, should arrive next mon-tue.
I used to have a Yaesu FRG-7700 for listening to the amateur bands and loved it. It was a solid receiver. Hooked up to two 50 ' long wire antennas one aligned NS and the other EW on a coax AB switch. Lots of fun. Sorry I sold it. May just have to buy another Yaesu receiver in the near future.
On that FRG-7700 I was getting a ton of noise from somewhere. A ham on one of the forums told me to pound in an 8' ground rod about 40' from my house with #10 wire radials attached to it and then that to my FRG-7700 chassis ground. Worked like a charm, really dropped the noise level. Still was not sure where the noise was coming from but happy it was gone. Sure made listening to weak stations possible. That ground is still buried in the back yard so can use it if needed.