On Mon, 04 May 2009, Jim Lux wrote:

Where are you located? The recommendation will vary
substantially if you are in Southern California (almost no
lightning) or Orlando Florida (Lightning capital of the US,
for all intents and purposes).


Heidelberg, located in central Germany. Lightning is not a huge
problem here, but one can perhaps never be too safe in that regard.

By the way, the soil here is just fine as well and certainly doesn't
lack moisture. Thus, since so many are fosusing on it, I'm sorry the
salt was even mentioned. It's not needed in any way. It's just
something I've gotten into the habit of doing.


Hmm. and that Yaesu technician has what training and
experience in grounding systems for lightning protection
(other than what's printed in the front of the manuals)?

And did the salting improve anything? if so, what? adding
grounding is almost always the wrong solution to
operational problems (RFI, for instance), since the purpose
of grounding systems is to deal with abnormal events
(short circuits, transients, etc.)


The salt did indeed help in that particular situation. At the time, I
was living on a hillside in Bremerton Washington, with the immediate
countryside mostly small rock incapable of holding water for any
length of time.

The situation was so bad, my radio (Yaesu FT-847) would often
instantly shut off due to high SWR readings, in spite of my ground
plane antenna being fully functional with several (at one point eight)
ground rods installed. The only way to prevent that was to add water
around the ground rods each day, which usually worked only until the
next day.

Since adding more ground rods did nothing (and watering my antenna
each day was quickly getting tedious), I called Yaesu thinking the
radio might be defective. The technician recommended salt after
agreeing my ground rods should be sufficient for the task.

I was skeptical, but did as he suggested. Dug a hole (about a foot
deep) around each ground rod, drove the rods in a bit deaper, poured
in a generous helping of rock salt, and then watered the area long
enough for the salt to spread into the soil.

Of course, the radio was fine immediately after adding the water, but
the real test was the next day once the water drained away. The radio
did operate just fine that next day, and the day after that. In fact,
the rock salt added to the soil (more added every two to three months)
resolved the problem entirely the remainder of my time at that
location.

stewart / w5net