" wrote in
ups.com:

Greetings,

To be honest, I'm a little embarrassed to even be posting this
question. I've been a ham for over 10 years, but I've been out of the
hobby for the past several and I'll freely admit that I'm one of those
"memorize the multiple choice" people. Anyway, times have changed and
I now own a house, and an HF rig, and have moved far from my roots. I
want to get an HF station together, but I find the prospect of
building/raising an antenna and putting together a grounding system a
daunting task.

So here's my question. Is it ok to have multiple shallow grounding
rods versus one longer grounding rod? For example, what's the
difference between 2 four foot rods versus 1 eight foot rod?

Also, I'd like to describe my potential station set up, as I strongly
suspect that it is not ideal, and I'd like any suggestions from the
elmering crowd. It's on the 2nd floor of my home, over the garage.
The power, cable, and phone connections are on the opposite side of
the house, and there is no way to directly go under the house to get
there (at least from outside the house). The home is nearly brand new
(less than one year old). I should also mention that I have an
unnatural fear of putting holes in the house, but I suppose I'll have
to get over that in order to get on the air ;-).

Thanks in advance and 73!

Dan, W4XJF

Hi Dan:

I want to follow on what some of the other have said.
First to only reason to have an RF ground in you shack is if you are
going to use an antenna that brings part of the antenna that is supposed
to radiate RF into the shack, as an example, a long wire antenna.
Dipoles, beams and verticals that are feed with coax do not need RF
grounds in the shack. Anyway making a RF ground in a second floor shack
is a hard job.
You do need a ground for lighting and static charge protection. For
information on how to do that the Polyphaser web site is a good place to
go.
The basics are at least one 8’ ground rod as close to the shack as
physically possible. More ground rods are better. Using shorter ground
rods requires the use of more of them. In all cases more ground rods,
properly installed the better. The ground rods should be connected
together, if more than one is used, and to the shack with at least a #6
solid copper wire. You can bring it in to the shack anyway that is
convent. Also national electrical code requires that all grounds to
connect to the house ground (green wire ground) also. There is already a
ground rod connecting your fuse panel to earth ground and your lighting
protection ground must be connected to this ground via at least a #6 sold
copper wire. The problem with RF ground and second story shacks is the
length of wire will be too long the reach the earth and will act more as
an antenna than a ground.

Hope this helps.
73
John Passaneau W3JXP