[Elecraft] Proper grounding for P3.

[Jim Brown]

Hi Dave,

Here's my take on Grounding and Bonding for ham radio.  Most of it was 
incorporated in Ward Silver's new ARRL book on the topic.

http://k9yc.com/GroundingAndAudio.pdf

Yes, you should add a suitable bonding point for any gear that lacks it. 
Just make sure that whatever point you choose isn't insulated from the 
chassis by paint. :)



On 3/28/2018 11:54 AM, David Olean wrote:
> 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.

One of the most important rules about grounds is that you can have as 
many as you like, but in a premises, all MUST be bonded together.

> 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. 

Yes.

> 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.

Great. The only thing better is daisy-chain bonding from 
chassis-to-chassis of interconnected equipment. Study the tutorial.

73, Jim K9YC