[ICOM] Grounding

[Dick Flanagan]

At 11:26 PM 5/17/2004, "William Diamond" <wjdiamond at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
 >Hi folks,
 >
 >I spent a few hours today with an engineer from the power company as I had a
 >whole house surge device put on my main electrical service.
 >
 >He said that my present grounding setup is a problem, i.e.., separate ground
 >rods for the tower as well as the radio room.  He said that I needed "single
 >point" grounding system with the tower and radio room tied into the main
 >power company ground so there will not be a difference of potential.
 >
 >He said that a small wire such as #10 will be fine.
 >
 >Has anyone else heard of this?

Yup.  He's right.  My central ground point is just outside my shack.  From 
that point 25 equal-length 12AWG wires fan out into the shack and connect 
to each piece of equipment to be grounded.  When the voltage spikes on the 
central ground point, all 25 lengths of wires rise with it, all 25 pieces 
of gear rise with it, and they all fall with it.  REAL lightning protection 
schemes are not easy and often not intuitive.

73, Dick
--
Dick Flanagan K7VC NV SM
E-mail: k7vc at arrl.org