On Sunday, June 19, 2011 4:41:43 PM UTC-5, Michael wrote:
the next issue is earth ground and lightning
protection. my shack is on the second floor of my house. in order to
deal with rf and lighting with my short wave set up, i went with an
inverted L that is grounded to an 8 foot brass rod through the
matching transformer. i dont have any rf problems with this set up
even though my radio is not grounded in the shack. for lightning
protection, i disconnect my coax feed and hang it out the window when
I'm not using the radio. i've already read a pile of stuff on line
already about other people that have had the same problem with a
second floor location, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do
about grounding the transceiver when I hook it up to a dipole.

Using a dipole, which is a complete antenna, there
is no need to have an RF ground. And no need to ground
the radio, unless there is a high voltage safety reason
for it. "safety ground". But any outlet with a ground
pin will provide that.
With the case of the Kenwood 12v rig, that is not
the case. Only the power supply that feeds it needs a
safety ground. And most all those have a third ground pin
on the plug.
But you do need to worry about lightning. But less with
a dipole, than a vertical that is on the house.
The horizontal wire will be less likely to stream than
a vertical. So less likely to attract a strike.
But it can still happen. It would be best to run the
feed line straight down to ground, and then under or
along the ground to the shack. But this is kind of
impractical with a typical ladder line setup.
The worst case for damage is to have the feed line
running elevated in the air to the 2nd floor shack.
So if you have to run it like that, you sure don't
want it connected when storms are in the area.
I'd have some way to totally disconnect it from
the house on the outside when not in use.

This is one reason why I generally prefer coax.
Easier to mitigate the effects of lightning..
I can snub lines to ground at the base of masts,
connect and snub through a "ground window" at the
entrance to the shack, and generally it's easier
to use the typical lightning arresters.
Ladder line is harder to deal with in these aspects.
Or at least to me..
But you can use gas tubes on each conductor, etc..
That would require a good lightning ground outside.
And all grounds outside should route to a central
point, and be tied together to keep all at the same
potential.
If you use a mast to support the apex of the dipole,
it's more likely to be struck than the wire antenna
itself. So it's best to use a metal mast that is
grounded at the base. I don't use any non conductive
masts here.
I have no RF ground in the shack. Except for rare
cases, I don't believe in them. I've found they
usually cause more problems than they solve.
These problems would usually rear their ugly heads
when I would kick in some RF horsepower.. What is not
yet a problem at 100w, can be a real pain at a KW+.
:/