I used one 10 ft. copper clad steel ground rod and three 10 ft. copper
pipes. The pipes had 1/4 inch holes
drilled randomly throughout the bottom six feet and allowed me to annually
pour an epsom salt solution through them to enhance
ground conductivity. One copper pipe was set about 6 inches away from the
paired copper clad steel -- this
enabled the salt solution to salt the region of both. The two sets were
about ten feet apart and joined together
with heavy copper clad steel wire (Silver soldered). . To one set I attached
a number of random length radials running across the
yard (along two fence lines) and around the side of the house. They gave me
a real good ground as far as I
was concerned. Due to illness I recently sold the house, and extracted the
ground system. Surprisingly there was
little if any degredation of the metal elements -- that was after 27 years
in the ground! Both the copper clad steel
rod and the copper pipes were in good shape. Copper is expensive, but it
lasted a long time and took the
worry about whether I had a good ground away.

To install the copper pipes, I first drove in the copper clad steel rod,
then drew it out of the ground with
a car jack and inserted the copper pipes in the resultant holes.

To make the job easy, I had a young ham use a sledgehammer to drive the
copper clad steel pipe into
the ground and jack it back out -- three times! For the fourth hole I did
not have to extract the rod -- it
was left in place.

I'm no engineer, and never did any ground testing (whatever that involved),
but I was totally satisfied
with the system. Do it once right amd then don't worry about it!

Irv VE6BP





"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 27 May 2010 17:36:41 -0700, Bob Smits wrote:

Is there a significant difference between using the galvanized steel
ground
rods and copper to create an rf gound?

Hi Bob,

Two answers for that:
1. No difference whatever;
B. Neither make an RF ground.

Updates will follow this brief announcement.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC