To ground, or not to ground, that is the question...

[Vince6444]

Hey yall, just a quick question, may open a big can of worms, but I am a asking, should a base antenna be grounded or not, I have a Comet DS-150S discone base antenna set up on a bracket off my porch, framed with PT lumber, and stainless antenna mounts, on a 10 ft pipe, a top rail of a chain link fence, it works great, but I wonder if it would do better if I had the mast grounded?

What yall think??

​

 

[dave3825]

Pretty sure if its connected to the house, or has feed line running into a house, it needs to be grounded. You should read up on the National Electrical Code.

 

[mmckenna]

Grounding isn't likely to improve performance if everything else is done right.

But dave is right, it is required by the NEC and for a good reason.

 

[murphcc1]

Lightning is frightening........

 

[trentbob]

Even if your house doesn't burn down, the radio is not going to like it at all if you're hit by lightning.

 

[kc2asb]

Lightning is frightening........

People who don't ground and have no issues are simply lucky, but that can run out in an instant. Years ago, a neighbor's TV antenna took a direct hit. He found aluminum pellets all around the yard.

 

[gmclam]

When "lightning"/etc. hits your antenna, where do you want it to go? Your radios? Yourself? Your family? It's not about what provides for better reception.

 

[EAFrizzle]

People who don't ground and have no issues are simply lucky, but that can run out in an instant. Years ago, a neighbor's TV antenna took a direct hit. He found aluminum pellets all around the yard.

Back in the 90s I lived in a house that had strange things appear after thunderstorms. 1" wide strips of pine wood 6-8' long all over the yard, couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

After a while, I noticed a tree in the back of the property with strips torn out of it. Up near the top was a 108" steel whip with about 10' of torn-up coax hanging from it. Apparently some kids in the 70s had a base station.

 

[dave3825]

In the last year had 2 strikes near me. First was in back yard and blew out my network switch, lan card in PC and 2 led lights. This was without any antenna on my home. Second was on side of house and hit a small maple tree causing it to split and burn. I have family in upstate NY farming area and they all have lightning rods on their homes.

 

[mmckenna]

Yeah, important thing to remember is that it doesn't take a direct lightning strike to do damage. Assuming "lightning won't strike my antenna" isn't going to make a difference if you have a strike nearby.

 

[kc2asb]

Yeah, important thing to remember is that it doesn't take a direct lightning strike to do damage. Assuming "lightning won't strike my antenna" isn't going to make a difference if you have a strike nearby.

Yep. Found that out the hard way when a nearby strike damaged my R-8500. Stupidly, I did not disconnect it since the weather looked fine. Definitely a costly lesson.

 

[n7maq-1]

We had a customer that lost their RX antenna at the top, this is what the tower crew found.

 

[bharvey2]

We had a customer that lost their RX antenna at the top, this is what the tower crew found.

View attachment 182178

Ouch! I guess these "No Lightning Allowed" signs I see don't work as well as I thought.

 

[prcguy]

It’s nearly impossible to ground a residential antenna where the radio and electronics in the house will survive. It would be very expensive and involved to rebuild the entire home electrical system and install a ground ring and single point grounding. For a repeater site it’s all done during the initial build so it’s much easier and less costly. My advice is ground to NEC at the minimum and realize you will not survive a direct hit and disconnect your antennas when lightning is possible. It’s better to know it won’t survive and take steps to disconnect over thinking it will survive and it doesn’t.

 

[KMG54]

PRC guy a question for you. I am putting two televes antennas on a 30 foot mast, planning on a ground rod at the base and then burying 6Ga bare copper 50 foot to the house ground. will that work? I do realize that a direct strike would look like a Ditch witch ran through the yard and nothing would survive, but is that the proper way?

 

[prcguy]

PRC guy a question for you. I am putting two televes antennas on a 30 foot mast, planning on a ground rod at the base and then burying 6Ga bare copper 50 foot to the house ground. will that work? I do realize that a direct strike would look like a Ditch witch ran through the yard and nothing would survive, but is that the proper way?

That sounds reasonable but you should really look at the NEC and specifically article 810 that deals with antenna grounding. Here is one of many good online pictorials of antenna grounding to code. A minimum of 6ga copper wire is required for bonding your mast to the house main ground but there may be a length where you have to upsize the wire gauge and I don't have that info.

https://www.mikeholt.com/files/PDF/Radio_and_Television_2014NEC.pdf

 

[MUTNAV]

We had a customer that lost their RX antenna at the top, this is what the tower crew found.

View attachment 182178
View attachment 182177

Slightly off topic, but I've always thought that using something similer to scaffolding would make a good antenna tower... Then I found this manual.

https://ia601802.us.archive.org/14/items/TM11-5073/TM11-5073_text.pdf

Thanks
Joel