A good RF earth? Episode 1
Just making the arrangements to connect the front garden RF
earth to the back garden RF earth and curious as to the ohmic
resistance from the front garden RF earth to the house's TT
earth, the ground spikes being only a foot apart.*****
Infinity. No connection.
Try the back garden RF earth, via the LW antenna coming into
the shack, about 30 ohms.
Tried watering the spikes, because of recent protracted dry
spell, and ohm-meter goes haywire. Put meter onto volts
range and now about 10mV between back garden earth and house earth,
simple galvanic action, no doubt, now that ground around is wet.
But, still no connection to front garden earth, so dig and delve
down and find that despite the use of copper microbore in a fan
away from the spike, the end of the earth wire has corroded yielding
no electrical contact.
***** Curiosity has paid off, othewise would not have known of
uselessness of front garden RF earth, save that the 16 foot earth
downlead from the front bedroom radio shack would have been
1/4 wave on 20m :-)
PS. When did any of you others check the continuity of your RF earths?
To be continued ...
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