[Antennas] Ground rod questions (Ground currents)

[Loren Moline WA7SKT]

Philip and all,

I have been following this thread and wonder first of all where is the noise coming from?

Also except for lightning protection what do you have that requires a ground in addition to the power ground?

If your trying to eliminate noise with a ground there must be something causing the noise and that's where I would look..

I have had my power company change insulators that were breaking down and I even found the poles for them.

 

Loren   WA7SKT


 
Member: ARRL and Pacific Northwest VHF Society

Member: Hearsat Satellite Monitoring Group

Location: CN86cx                                                                                        
                          
                                 








> From: ko6bb at sbcglobal.net
> To: n6ry at arrl.net
> Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:43:32 +0000
> CC: antennas at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Antennas] Ground rod questions (Ground currents)
> 
> Terry,
> You may have hit the nail on the head so to speak.  And you're right, I 
> realized a long time ago that the ground 'shouldn't' make a difference at 
> 2M, but it does.   I just unbolted the ground cable from the under-bench 
> buss (leading to the station ground system).  While the AC Voltage and 
> currents bounced around some on the DVM, I read an average of 250mV between 
> the bench-buss and the external grounds.  When I measured the AC current it 
> averaged about 100mA, certainly a significant current for a supposed ground 
> system (and I've made sure that ALL the cables, hot, neutral etc are 
> securely tightened in my own service box).  The ground is still damp under 
> the surface from the heavy soaking I gave it last week so it would take 
> quite some time before it got that dry again.
> 
> But disconnecting the ground completely DOES raise the noise level in the 
> radios.  So I would guess that I probably do have the best ground in the 
> entire park of about 240 Mobile homes (each mobile home has a ground rod at 
> the service meter).
> 
> It looks like the best thing that I can do is probably like I planned, 
> replace the old (rotted) short rods with longer ones and go with about five 
> long rods daisy chained together and just make sure I have the best possible 
> ground for my station and moisten it as needed (I certainly can't go to 
> every mobile home and rework their grounds!)   I DO KNOW that some of the 
> older homes in the park probably have very questionable wiring anyway, my 
> neighbor has an intermittent loss of a neutral or something and burned up 
> every TV, computer and microwave in his home!  He's had electricians and PGE 
> come out to locate the problem and they haven't found it (I did a brief 
> check and it was good at his service entrance).
> 
> But my noise problem goes way back before his wiring problem as I put the 
> present ground system in when I moved in nine years ago and it made a BIG 
> difference then.
> 
> 73 de Phil,  KO6BB
> http://ko6bb1.multiply.com/ (My OTR Blog)
> http://www.qsl.net/ko6bb/   (Web Page)
> 
> DX begins at the noise floor!
> RADIO: Yaesu FT-2000.
> Antennas:  Butternut HF-2v,  88' Ladder-Line fed dipole.
> Merced, Central California, 37.3N 120.48W  CM97sh
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Terry Conboy" <n6ry at arrl.net>
> To: <antennas at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 12:06 AM
> Subject: Re: [Antennas] Ground rod questions
> 
> 
> >I wonder if Phil's ground is actually a noise generator.  It would be
> > really interesting to check the 60 Hz current flowing into his
> > collection of ground rods before and after watering them.  Or check with
> > a voltmeter between his mobile home It's quite possible that he is the
> > best ground in the whole trailer village, but when dry, it may produce
> > noise as minor arcing or spitting generates trash all the way up through 
> > 2m.
> >
> > It's highly unlikely that the ground system is actually effective for 2m
> > RF, so it might be worth thinking of the "ground" system as the source
> > of the noise, rather than a sink for noise.
> >
> > 73, Terry N6RY
> 
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