Safety grounding shack equipment

[robertwbob]

in a lightning storm or if weather says lightning i unhook coaxes.unplug power supplys too. i have coax barrel splicers outside my house, i go out unhappy but disconnet them and hang ends on a flower trellis about 10 feet from house. lightning does what you cant,it chooses its direction. you can only try to give it a path to go with least destruction. and lightning can run up your ground wires too.
it hit an A99 unhooked about 4 years ago.i had shards of fiberglass all over my yard. it was unhooked coax laying across the flower trellis

 

[dlwtrunked]

If you ground an antenna to a ground rod not bonded to the house main entry panel ground per NEC you could have more damage from a direct hit than not grounding the antenna.

In my case, my tower has a separate 8 ft ground rod on each leg. One is the secondary house ground (the secondary house power ground is required here). I attaching the tower leg to that ground rod, I found nothing attached to it. After a lot of digging I found the builders secondary ground wire was 2 ft short of reaching that ground rod. I had to fix that. People should not assume the builders ground connection is good without checking it.

 

[popnokick]

but I have questions about grounding the equipment inside the shack for safety purposes.

Seems like the OP was mainly interested in safety grounding regarding electrical hazards that may be present on equipment constantly due to faulty design or ground faults. But this thread has jumped off into the unusual (but spectacular) event of lightning-related events: strikes, surges, etc. Regarding voltage / current that might be omnipresent on equipment cabinets, metal connectors, knobs, etc. get yourself a multimeter (if you don't already have one they're inexpensive) and set the meter scale for a high AC or DC voltage. Then place one lead on the cabinet / metal you regard as "suspect" and the other to ground (or a connection you know should be at ground potential). Or place the leads between the suspected "hot" chassis and connections. If you don't see a reading on the meter dial down the measuring range until you do .... or hopefully do not. Your simple meter is going to tell you if something is "hot" with an electrical charge, or even show you a low-level "trickle" that may be a precursor to a greater problem. And testing this way can even indicate if your "safety" ground is doing what it should be as a protective ground (not lightning or lightning-surge related hazards). The same multimeter... set in Ohm / Continuity mode... can also tell you if there is continuity between a piece of equipment and your "safety" ground connection.

 

[AB4BF]

Seems like the OP was mainly interested in safety grounding regarding electrical hazards that may be present on equipment constantly due to faulty design or ground faults. But this thread has jumped off into the unusual (but spectacular) event of lightning-related events: strikes, surges, etc. Regarding voltage / current that might be omnipresent on equipment cabinets, metal connectors, knobs, etc. get yourself a multimeter (if you don't already have one they're inexpensive) and set the meter scale for a high AC or DC voltage. Then place one lead on the cabinet / metal you regard as "suspect" and the other to ground (or a connection you know should be at ground potential). Or place the leads between the suspected "hot" chassis and connections. If you don't see a reading on the meter dial down the measuring range until you do .... or hopefully do not. Your simple meter is going to tell you if something is "hot" with an electrical charge, or even show you a low-level "trickle" that may be a precursor to a greater problem. And testing this way can even indicate if your "safety" ground is doing what it should be as a protective ground (not lightning or lightning-surge related hazards). The same multimeter... set in Ohm / Continuity mode... can also tell you if there is continuity between a piece of equipment and your "safety" ground connection.

In addition to what popnokik states, having a household 120VAC wall outlet polarity tester is very important these days due to electricians in a hurry, colorblind, hung-over, dyslexic (me), or sometimes having a bad day. These are inexpensive to sky's the limit in prices and quality. Its very important to keep the polarity straight on all the outlets in your house and ham shack!

wall plug polarity indicator - Walmart.com

wall plug polarity indicator - Walmart.com

www.walmart.com

I recently chased down a friend and fellow ham's electrical problem with just the rudimentary type of one of these. Even though his 991 is 13.8 volts through a power supply the radio started shocking him when he transmitted. Surprised me it would do that! With the outlet tester, I found in the 120VAC outlet the white and black were switched on the outlet itself. Switched them back and got rid of that problem. Whoever wired this ham shack up was having a very bad day...