"David Robbins" wrote in message
...

"Adam T. Cately" wrote in message
...
SNIP

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but here's something glaringly
obvious...

Grounding will be easy when I get around to it - I have
baseboard hot water radiators that I can ground to.

NEVER ground to hot water pipes - ALWAYS use the cold water pipe,
as it goes directly to the earth outside the building. The hot water
pipes are routed through the hot water heater(s) and are NOT a direct
path to ground.


first a couple of truisms:
NEVER say NEVER.
NEVER believe anyone who asserts an ALWAYS.
In the end an easy job is rarely as easy as you first thought.

That being said, NEVER rely on pipes of any kind for safety (either AC or
lightning) grounding of equipment, ALWAYS run your own wire to the proper
ground rod or electrical service connection as required by electrical
codes.

RF "grounds" are another problem. The problem here is to remember that
any
conductor more than a small fraction of a wavelength will have currents
induced in it and thus have a different voltage at one end than the other
when exposed to an HF RF field. The real aim here is two fold: First, to
provide a low resistance path for 'ground' currents back to the antenna
end
of the feedline so the currents in the feedline can be properly balanced.
Second, to keep all equipment and personel in the antenna field near the
same potential to prevent injury and reduce interference.



Ha! Great point!

I'm planning on buying a Radio Shack outlet tester (22-141, pg 238 of
the last catalog) - if it shows my outlets are configired properly, I plan
on
running a heavy insulated ground wire from the outlet to the pipe (8").

Does this sound right to you? As far as RF goes, I can touch *any*
component of the system and not see any DC current, SWR or other
changes at all when transmitting so I guess I've got a pretty good RF
ground already.

Then there is the performance issue - the solar numbers haven't been
very good for some time but yesterday I worked stations coast to
coast on 20 & 40 with 5 watts and got some impressive signal reports.
So, whatever I'm doing, it seems to be working OK.

72's all De Ken KG0WX/QRP