[Elecraft] Recieve Loss

[Stuart Rohre]

Kent,
It is likely a capacitor filter connected to ground from the AC motor and
its control box on the well pump.

Connecting to a well casing is dangerous business, In that well is a 220
volt AC motor and it does not take much to nick that 3 wire cable going down
inside the water and cause leakage to neutral such as to develop 62 volts
from that source as well.  However, I have commonly seen 62 volts as the
leakage from a cap to ground when one side of the cap is on the AC hot lead
of a 120 volt power line.  It might be normal amount of leakage for a large
cap of 0.1 MF for example, if it were from hot to chassis.

Using a well casing for an RF ground is a fallacy propagated thru ham radio
folk lore.

Your RF ground needs to be short in terms of wavelength of operation.  A 300
foot well pipe may have only 50 feet in the water table, and rest in air of
shaft and casing, so is not really low impedance to RF.  It MAY be a
satisfactory place to return a lightning stroke, but that will surely burn
out your pump motor causing high dollar damage as they have to pull all well
pipe and replace the motor.

For static grounding of an antenna, just use a ground rod per NEC, 8 foot
driven, if soil is soft and rock free enough.   Disconnect the antenna from
the rig when not in use.  You probably have been stressing the K2 all along
and finally some component went with the constant 62 volt AC on it.

Look at that well as a high voltage accident waiting to happen around water!
Don't touch any well pipe coming from the pump while standing on earth, just
in case.  Use a safety ground like a battery jumper cable to discharge the
well pipe before working on it.  Hopefully, there will be some metal in the
ground near the well house.

Sorry you had to learn the hard way,
72,
Stuart K5KVH