On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 13:23:59 -0000, "David Robbins"
wrote:


"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

You reminded me of the sometimes tremendous difference between RF
ground and electrical ground.

Many years ago I had my station temporarily down in the basement when
I still lived with my folks. (bout 43 years ago) There was a storm
headed our way and I decided to disconnect the antenna and goround out
the station.

Well, when I grounded the transmitter (HT-37) by tying the coax to the
hot water heating system the signals on 20 actually got louder...I
didn't have much of an antenna to begine with. I thought I might as
well give it a try and actually worked a couple of South American
stations with the transmitter output tied to that 1" copper water
pipe. The ground terminal had a copper braid tied to it, but that had
to run out a window and tie to an 8' ground rod that was pretty much
in dry sand.

Good thing no one used the ahhh facilities while I was transmitting as
everything in the water system was hot.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)
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.