[Elecraft] Confessions of grounding

[Jim Brown]

On 10/12/2018 10:02 AM, Jim McDonald wrote:
> I use braided copper strap, and my operating desk is about 2' away from the wall, so I can walk behind it.

I wish I had done that when I set up my shack in the home I bought when 
I moved to California.

On 10/12/2018 9:47 AM, Leroy Buller wrote:
> There has got to be a better way.

I make short jumpers (an inch or two) with a lug on one end and a Power 
Pole on the other. I then make Power Pole jumpers from there to 
multi-way Power Pole connector blocks, as well as home brew Power Pole 
paralleling junctions that tie my gear to the house ground system.  I 
often take one or more my rigs to the field for Field Day, the 7th area 
QSO Party, and the California QSO Party. Having that short Power Pole 
jumper on the back of the K3 really helps.

On 10/12/2018 9:54 AM, Bob McGraw K4TAX wrote:
> I bond each piece of equipment to a common ground terminal on my power 
> supply.  I do not have any ground from the station to the outside.  
> Only the 3rd pin safety ground is in place.

Most authorities advise that MORE bonding is best. The fundamental 
principle is to have the potential of everything in your home rise to as 
close as possible to the same potential in the event of a strike.  At 
the very least, I would add serious bonds between your operating desk, 
antenna entry panel, and your exterior collection of ground rods, making 
them as short as possible.  The lack of that bonding has the potential 
for a strike generating a very high potential between your operating 
desk and antenna system.  N0AX addresses this in his recent ARRL book on 
Grounding and Bonding.

> The station is fed from a common 240V 4 wire service for the amp and 
> other related equipment.  From the 240V 4 wire service, I break off 
> with 2 duplex outlets on each line side.  Thus the neutral and safety 
> ground are common for the station.

That's great.

>
> All efforts toward lightning protection are implemented outside of the 
> house.  This includes a driven ground system at the base of the tower 
> next to the house and it is bonded outside of the house to the AC 
> Mains ground.  The lightning rod system on the roof is also bonded to 
> the AC Mains ground.

How far are the AC entry and your tower from your shack?  If they're 
very close, that's fine. If not, I'd strongly consider a perimeter 
ground, as described in N0AX's book. I've implemented a perimeter ground 
halfway around the building that houses my shack from the panel to the 
antenna entry panel, with ground rods at four points around that 
perimeter and four more outside the shack. There's a bond from there to 
the antenna panel, and from the panel to the steel conduit (EMT that 
carries AC wiring from the shack to the AC panel.

On 10/12/2018 10:31 AM, Wes Stewart wrote:
> As far as I'm concerned this is just a safety ground, not something 
> worthy of an RF ground. 

What's an RF ground? :)   And lightning is both a DC event and an RF event.

> All of the other gear is similarly grounded to the same clamp. 
> Worrywarts will wring their hands over ground loops, RF in the shack, 
> install hundreds of dollars worth of ferrite, etc.  None of that here.

Depending on how close your shack is to your antennas, ferrite cores can 
be needed on cables like those from computers to video monitors and 
monitors to their power supplies  to kill RX noise. And until I replaced 
the power supply for my SteppIR controller with a home brew regulated 
33V supply, 15, 12, and 10M bands were unusable, and no amount of 
ferrite would kill the noise! But like you, I use no ferrite cores on 
anything in the RF or audio path -- all that is solved by bonding ALL 
the interconnected gear, including the computer.

73, Jim K9YC