[Elecraft] Is there a "grounding" Elmer on line?

[Stuart Rohre]

Daniel,
grounds to rods should NEVER be soldered.  Clamping or Cad welding are the
only methods acceptable under National Electrical Code, and RF practice.

Wetting down your ground rod, if a single rod, does not take care of the
problem in dry areas.   Most truly desert areas do not have enough
conductive salts in the sandy earth to provide a good ground.  In those
areas, multiple conductors (wide and flat if possible for RF uses,) are used
to form a crowfoot ground to spread charge from a strike over as wide an
area as possible.

The same problem in dry sandy areas is found in very wet tropical areas!
Just having wet earth is NOT the answer.   If it is rainy and tropical,
along the equator- jungle areas for example, all the conductive salts leach
out of the earth and wash away.   In tropical Malaysia, it often took 5 or
10 ground rods driven to get an AC ground on a substation, or three phase
building power entry.  I have seen plasma from a nearby building strike
travel 40 feet passing several grounding conductor down leads of a lightning
rod system, to find one that had a more suitable low impedance before
following the downlead into the earth.

In dry rocky areas, lack of conductivity in the earth has lead our local
utility to find by computer analysis that a minimum no. 10 wire 200 feet
long, buried in a circumferential path around the building or substation
will protect the station equivalent to a 5 ohm ground rod system.  Larger
wire can of course be used.  This is very useful as the wire can be buried
in a shallow trench, with the soil compacted after burial, if you cannot go
deep and drive rods due to rock content.

For Field use, the US Army has used many shorter rods, but this is for
portable stations in temporary locations.   No clear description of the
assumed ground conductivity was given for that application.

73, Stuart K5KVH