[Elecraft] ?OT? Grounding/Protection question...

[Vic Rosenthal]

Stuart Rohre wrote:
> John, your set up for protection sounds pretty good, but 16 feet between
> ground rods is a half wave at 10m,  and  a quarter wave on 20m, so watch for
> any RF in the shack issues on those bands.  

Lightning grounds are an entirely different animal than RF grounds.  A 
ground rod or group thereof is a very poor RF ground, although 
functional for lightning protection purposes.  Depending on the type of 
antenna, no additional RF ground may be required (dipoles or beams with 
baluns, for example).  Vertical monopoles, of course, do require RF 
ground systems.

It is possible to make a combined RF/lightning ground (e.g., you could 
make several of the buried radials for your vertical out of no. 4 copper 
and string some ground rods along those radials) but in general the 
structures are different.  Even in this special case, the ground rods 
would probably have very little effect on the RF grounding properties of 
the system.

The recommended spacing for ground rods along a lightning protection 
radial is twice the length of the rod, so John seems to be following 
standard procedure here.

73
Vic K2VCO