R8600 To Ground Radio or Not?

[MTScannerNut]

Just received my R8600 and will be setting it up this weekend. I'm still confused on the benefits, if any, of grounding the receiver using the screw on the back of the case. Of course, the manual strongly recommends grounding to a copper rod. My setup is an outdoor Discone that has the mast and coax properly grounded to two separate 8' copper rods and linked together. I will be experimenting with long wire/random wire antennas for shortwave listening to see what works best.

I could ground the receiver to one of my existing ground rods, but will it be worth the effort? Some say it is totally unnecessary, while others, like this video I saw, seem to show some benefit

What have you guys done and recommend? Thanks, Ed

 

[littona]

Grounding is both for safety and to improve your signal. You will get a million different answers on what folks thing is the best way to ground things. At the end of the day, some ground is better than none at all. A great grounding system can get expensive. You'd want the radio grounded by itself and your outdoor antenna grounded before your feedline back to the radio.

 

[prcguy]

I've grounded and lifted the ground on countless radios and have personally never seen the noise floor reduced. In some cases it goes up due to the house ground being common with lots of noise making appliances sharing the common ground. Noise does not automatically travel to ground when you supply one, it doesn't know any better to do that. The only way to know if it will reduce noise is to try it and go with whatever gives you the lowest noise.

You should always ground to NEC at the minimum and specifically Article 810 which deals specifically with antenna grounding.

 

[WB9YBM]

I've run my set-up both ways. For safety grounding (and other lightning protection measures) is always a good idea. That being said, I've also heard (and this is a very unofficial survey) that people who ground everything seem to get hit by lightning more often than those with an un-grounded set-up (I'm assuming that having an antenna stick way up in the air and having it grounded looks like a giant lightning rod and we all know how much lightning likes a lightning rod!).

Here are a few references that might help:

• National Lightning Safety Institute, “Indoor/Outdoor Swimming Pool Safety” section 4.7, September 6, 2018;
• Radmore, Bob, N2PWP. “A Lightning Detector for the Shack”, QST Magazine. April 2002 pages 59-61;
• "Lightning Operated Switch", CQ: Amateur Radio magazine, pages 27-9. March 2019.

 

[MTScannerNut]

Thank you for the advise so far.

Another related question if I may. My plan is to run a 10 awg wire from the radio to the ground rod just outside my shack. But I got to thinking, could I connect the ground wire to the grounding bolt of the coax lightning arrestor that is connected at the antenna entrance point? The arrestor is grounded to the rod using 8 awg wire. It would be strictly for convenience, since I would not have to dig a small trench to bury the wire if attached directly to the ground rod. I could also shorten the wire by several feet if I did it this way. Thanks again!

 

[Box_Car]

I wouldn't connect anything to the lightning arrester lead other than the ground rod. There is too much chance any strike would follow the lead back to your radio and affect anything in your shack.

 

[merlin]

I basically have 2 ground points, a rod to ground the mast that supports my discone. #14AWG about 5 foot for that. Same ground about 12 foot #14AWG to the lightning arrestor.
2nd ground I get from power service ground indoors that grounds all the shack electronics.
Again, #14 AWG. I checked for loops and less than 300Mv and less than 2 ohm difference.
Anything other than a direct strike, everything will survive. The discone does not have a direct path to ground, but its first stop is a preselector that gives the the coax hot a direct ground. (arrestor in front of that)
Any well designed receiver will have back to back diode suppressors and a 400K ohm static bleed.
Just my example of grounding and will work. No antenna or other grounding, it doesn't take a direct strike to do damage. someone mentioned some grounding is better than none.