[Elecraft] Proper grounding for P3.

[David Olean]

I have been rebuilding my little hamshack these last few days. I am only 
operating on one band (160M) so there is not much gear involved, but I 
am trying to do it all correctly to minimize noise pickup from common 
mode signals arriving in the shack from many RG-6 beverage feed lines.  
Most of my work is outdoors preventing common mode noise from 
propagating along the RG-6 coax.  To help things along inside the shack, 
I have installed a large copper buss bar with numerous attachment points 
for wide braid connections to all the AC powered equipment on the 
operating bench plus anything else that has RF or audio involved.  I 
have bonded everything to this buss bar and have routed a couple of #8 
ground wires in conduit from the buss down to two ground rods situated 
below the shack. I have a separate ground rod about 25 ft away for 
grounding the beverage feed lines.   I noted that several shack items 
had no provision for grounding.  One of them was the P3 panadaptor. 
There is no ground on it. The inside is pretty empty so there is plenty 
of room to install a ground lug. My question is will a lug modification 
bother some new accessory/option that Wayne 'n Eric have planned for the 
empty space?  Maybe an Elecraft Sno-Cone dispenser or Elecraft coffee 
maker?  The logical spot for a lug is on the back panel.  Am I safe there?

Is it good practice to bond the P3 chassis to ground? It gets 12 VDC 
power from an external source,  and it seems logical to have a separate 
ground point and not count on coax cable shields for any ground 
connection. I had a DX Engineering NCC-1 with no ground as well as the 
computer, recording device, an Astron power supply etc.  They are now 
all bonded to the copper buss bar.

Dave K1WHS