Station grounding.

[chriswakefield]

Hello all.
I am relatively new to amateur radio, but not without some hand held 2 meter experience. I have recently decided to finally get into HF and have a rig in mind, but I realize now I have a problem: the house I live in has no grounded outlets. My proposed shack area is also a long ways from the house electrical panel. I understand that a ground rod is required and that I need to ground all the equipment chassis, but my question is: can I use my (local) rig grounding system as a substitute for grounding the AC outlet for my power supply?
Chris.

 

[K8EAA]

Hi Chris
Go to the ARRL website or even Amazon and get yourself a copy of "Grounding and Bonding" This will have everything you need for a safe system. Way too much to go into right here.

Don

 

[AK9R]

ARRL :: Technical :: Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur

or

Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur 1, Inc., ARRL, Silver (N0AX), Ward - Amazon.com

Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur - Kindle edition by Inc., ARRL, Silver (N0AX), Ward. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur.

www.amazon.com

Ward Silver, the guy who wrote this book, did a presentation during Contest University last week on this topic. You can find the PDF of his presentation here: https://www.contestuniversity.com/w...unding-and-Bonding-For-Contest-Operations.pdf

 

[chriswakefield]

Thank you W9BU, the link below was excellent for me to get my head around setting up my station ground.

Ward Silver, the guy who wrote this book, did a presentation during Contest University last week on this topic. You can find the PDF of his presentation here: https://www.contestuniversity.com/w...unding-and-Bonding-For-Contest-Operations.pdf

 

[prcguy]

Adding a ground rod to your AC entry point per NEC is for human safety and will have little to no effect on your radio performance at HF. Grounding all of your HF equipment to this new ground will have little to no effect on your HF radio. Adding a ground rod without a complete redesign of your house electrical system will not protect you from a direct lightning hit. I would add one for human safety reasons but don't expect any other advantages.

Hello all.
I am relatively new to amateur radio, but not without some hand held 2 meter experience. I have recently decided to finally get into HF and have a rig in mind, but I realize now I have a problem: the house I live in has no grounded outlets. My proposed shack area is also a long ways from the house electrical panel. I understand that a ground rod is required and that I need to ground all the equipment chassis, but my question is: can I use my (local) rig grounding system as a substitute for grounding the AC outlet for my power supply?
Chris.

 

[spanky15805]

man prcguy, you take all the fun out of trying to pound a 10' rod through 8' of cleachie!

 

[prcguy]

The mechanics of pounding the rod in is easy. Rent a jackhammer with a ground rod bit or get a bit for your home hammer drill. I recently replaced my extremely old home 8ft 3/4" ground rod with a 10ft 5/8" and used a fairly small hammer drill with ground rod attachment and about 70lbs of weight on the hammer drill. I just pressed the trigger on the hammer drill and it ran about 10 minutes until the top of the rod was about 3" above ground. On big job sites where a dozen or more rods need to be installed around an antenna we will use an off road fork lift with a jack hammer chained to a fork and the forklift operator just rides the forks down as the rod goes in. Nobody sweats and they go in fast.

I've also used a home made slide hammer with several ft of 3/4" pipe and a pile flange and pipe cap holding a bunch of training weights over the pipe. You do have to lift the weights up and it gets tiring, but nothing like trying to use a sledge hammer, that is a hopeless task.

man prcguy, you take all the fun out of trying to pound a 10' rod through 8' of cleachie!

 

[spanky15805]

prcguy, do you have a "FAQ" website. I'm confident it would see good traffic, especially on weekends.

 

[prcguy]

Yes, I have a fact website in my head. Problem is if I try to put any new info in there something has to be purged out. The dang hard drive is full and the bearings are shot.

prcguy, do you have a "FAQ" website. I'm confident it would see good traffic, especially on weekends.

 

[ladn]

...ground rod bit...

I was today years old when I found out about this! Thanks!

 

[spanky15805]

don't want to hijack the thread...

prcguy, remember the hp 300 unix boxes with the stainless steel, 100 lbs hard drives that held 5 meg(86-90)? First thing I thought of.

 

[prcguy]

Yup. I was using HP desktops around 1983 then giant DEC machines. Back then 5 megs was big storage.

don't want to hijack the thread...

prcguy, remember the hp 300 unix boxes with the stainless steel, 100 lbs hard drives that held 5 meg(86-90)? First thing I thought of.