Hi Phil:

Two thoughts on your question. First it sound like your putting in the
ground rod for RF grounding reasons. Ground rods are very poor RF grounds.
Grounds rods are for lighting and electrical safety not RF. If you want a
good RF ground plus electrical protection ground putting in a ground rod
plus as many buried radials of what ever length you can manage will do the
job much better.
Second, I have 6 ground rods in my tower installation. The ground here is
rocky also, which made putting them in not something I looked forward to. In
the end I used an electric jack hammer to put them in. It had a cup adapter
in place of the normal bit. I started the rod by hand with a big hammer and
then muscled the electric jack hammer up and finished the job. The hardest
part was lifting the jack hammer up to reach the top of the ground rod. This
is a lot easier if you have some help. The jack hammer belonged to a friend
but I'm sure that a large rental store should have them.


--
John Passaneau, W3JXP
Penn State University


"Northern Lights" wrote in message
news:1069183285.115652@rh9cache2...
I have a mundane question.

Does anyone have suggestions for installing ground rods in rocky soil?
The
topsoil on my property tends to be very shallow, at times only 12 in.
deep.
I would rather use earth ground and not go the route of an artificial
ground.

I think I know the answer to my question but wanted to see if anyone out
there had a silver bullet solution.

Phil, K4NE