On Mon, 04 May 2009, dave wrote:

Do you have metal water pipes upstairs with continuity to a spot
near the ground rods downstairs? If so you can run a strap to
your shack upstairs, and another from the water pipe to the
ground rods downstairs.


Nope, nothing anywhere near the radio. All the water pipes in the
house are on the opposite side, fifty feet or more from the radio. The
shortest path to any ground whatsoever is directly out the window and
down to the soil roughly ten feet below.


You need an RF ground (as the safety ground is the 3 prong Edison.)
MFJ makes an artificial ground. Do you use a balun at the antenna
feedpoint? How do you tune the inverted-V?

Nothing is permanently installed at the moment, so it's a fairly clean
slate. The antenna (Alpha Delta Model DX-EE 40-20-15-10 meter dipole)
was pre-installed to drill the hooks needed to hold it up, but it's
now a pile of wires on the living room floor. The antenna doesn't have
a balun of any type.

While the antenna was up, I used an MFJ-207 Antenna/SWR Analyzer to
get some very quick readings just to make sure the antenna would work.

stewart / w5net