"Joe" wrote
If I understand correctly the just of these replies, --

I'm afraid you still didn't get the gist, Joe...

We could start over:

1.You want to set up shop in a basement.
2. You will have a Butternut vertical antenna nearby.
3. You want to know what should be grounded, and specifically where.
4. You asked about a bus-bar ground panel behind your radios.

We don't know where your main house AC power panel is, or what kind of
ground system it uses (could be the home's cold water supply pipe, a buried
copper plate, or buried copper ground rod). This will be important later,
and as others said, it is generally accepted practice and code in most
countries to require that all systems use either one single grounding point,
or bond any supplemental ground points to it. You should do at least some
basic research on your own about grounding and bonding, if this is not
abundantly clear to you.

Your vertical may or may not require the use of RF radials, counterpoise,
etc. Consult the manufacturers recommendations there, and follow them
exactly. If you do use a radial system or buried copper wires, some common
point of that system must bond to both the home's AC service ground point
*and* the radio equipment's ground rod, if separate ones are used. What you
do with your antenna and radio ground rods are entirely up to you.
Electrical codes do not cover bonding RF grounds and an separate radio
ground rod to each other. But a hundred years of sound lightning protection
science *does* require that you always bond ALL ground systems together,
NEVER leaving them isolated from each other.

It gets very expensive to provide high voltage isolation transformers
capable of safely isolating neutrals and ground systems, and while possible
this is never a goal of the hobbyist. Bonding everything should be your goal
in maintaining the basic forms of lightning protection.

Next, you can consider AC surge protection at both the AC entrance and radio
equipment. This is the protection from surge voltages that nearby lightning
imposes on either the incoming power lines, or magnetically onto the house
wiring.

Included in the category of surge protection are Surge Protection Devices
(most still call these lightning arrestors) that install in-line on your
coaxial or open-wire feedlines. These SPD's limit the amount of damaging
voltage presented to your radio's receiver circuitry.

Coax shield grounding (braid of the coax connected to ground rods at several
points as required) is what keeps damaging voltages off the exterior of the
radios, including your fingers, and limits back-flow of destructive current
out the back of the radios and into your homes AC wiring. The critical
bonding of radio and shield-grounding rods to the homes AC entrance ground
is of major importance here also. If you do not provide a very low impedance
path around your equipment, surge voltages can force one through your
equipment.

A copper bus-bar or other wide low-impedance "collector" of single point
grounding and bond points of all radios can be centered behind your
equipment as you asked. But avoid daisy chaining radios in a series to bond
them. As inconvenient and hard to conceal as it may be, individual bonding
connections from each radio, straight to the single point ground (for the
radio shack) is important. This not only provides the only approved bonding
method for lightning protection, but limits ground-loop noise between
equipments.

Hope this helps tie some of the other good posters comments together.

It's a long read, but I tried to cover most of the points of a total
lightning protection system in this website. It might clear up how important
the bonding is, I hope!

http://members.cox.net/pc-usa/station/ground0.htm

Best regards,

Jack Painter
Virginia Beach, Virginia

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 00:10:41 -0400, "Jack Painter"
wrote:


"Joe" wrote
If I understand correctly the just of these replies, --

I'm afraid you still didn't get the gist, Joe...

We could start over:

1.You want to set up shop in a basement.
2. You will have a Butternut vertical antenna nearby.
3. You want to know what should be grounded, and specifically where.
4. You asked about a bus-bar ground panel behind your radios.

*** BIG SNIP ***
It's a long read, but I tried to cover most of the points of a total
lightning protection system in this website. It might clear up how important
the bonding is, I hope!

http://members.cox.net/pc-usa/station/ground0.htm

Best regards,

Jack Painter
Virginia Beach, Virginia

Thanks Jack. You did tie (pun) it all together.

Russ

I agree that you should at the very least take K9STH's advice regarding
lightning with a grain of salt. There is some good advice about
grounding, but there is also some bad advice, and most of his theories
about lightning have been replaced in the last 20 years among the
scientific community.

Also, the way I see it, we ground our gear for low noise and good
radiated signals. NEC grounds things for safety and lightning
protection. What constitutes a "good" ground system may differ
according to which viewpoint you adopt.

On 23 Apr 2005 07:53:03 -0700, "
wrote:

I agree that you should at the very least take K9STH's advice regarding
lightning with a grain of salt. There is some good advice about
grounding, but there is also some bad advice, and most of his theories
about lightning have been replaced in the last 20 years among the
scientific community.

Is there a good layman's book on grounding amateur gear? Ask 10 hams a
grounding question and you get 11 answers :-)

bob
k5qwg



Also, the way I see it, we ground our gear for low noise and good
radiated signals. NEC grounds things for safety and lightning
protection. What constitutes a "good" ground system may differ
according to which viewpoint you adopt.

"Bob Miller" wrote
Is there a good layman's book on grounding amateur gear? Ask 10 hams a
grounding question and you get 11 answers :-)

bob
k5qwg

Bob, it gets even worse when total lightning protection systems are
involved.

This book below (Grounding v. Bonding) is an excellent fundamental approach
to the interrelationship between the two. Add to it the $35 NFPA-780 (Oct
2004 is current edition) Standard for Installation of Lightning Protection
Systems, and you will be a long way toward understanding how to best protect
equipment in your individual circumstances.

http://www.mikeholt.com/bookcategory...&from=Products


Best regards,

Jack

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:31:18 GMT, Bob Miller
wrote:

On 23 Apr 2005 07:53:03 -0700, "
wrote:

I agree that you should at the very least take K9STH's advice regarding
lightning with a grain of salt. There is some good advice about
grounding, but there is also some bad advice, and most of his theories
about lightning have been replaced in the last 20 years among the
scientific community.

Is there a good layman's book on grounding amateur gear? Ask 10 hams a
grounding question and you get 11 answers :-)

bob
k5qwg



Also, the way I see it, we ground our gear for low noise and good
radiated signals. NEC grounds things for safety and lightning
protection. What constitutes a "good" ground system may differ
according to which viewpoint you adopt.

Yes, got to the library and copy sections 250 and 800 of the National
Electric Code (NEC). It is quite clear and if you have passed element
two you should be able to understand the language.

I'll repeat myself because it bears repeating. All grounds are to be
bonded together with at least #6 wire and mechanical connections (no
soldering).

Russ

Bob Miller wrote:
"Is there a good layman`s book on grounding amateur gear?"

The ARRL Handbook for starters, My newest is the 1987 edition. It has
several pages of good suggestions on "The National Electrical Code",
protective devices, and lightning protection. They suggest books and
pamphlets to request for planning your installation.

There is no big disparity between lightning protection and electrical
noise abatement. The techniques are almost the same. I`ve checked
lightning prepared status by checking noise rejection capability.
Lightning is an enormous noise.

Want complete protection? Seal your protected treasure inside a seamless
box constructed of highly-conductive sturdy material. No wires enter and
no wires leave. No noise, no lightning, and no damage to the contents
either.
Now, bring wires through the box but use a series impedance in each (a
choke), and use a shunt admittance (a capacitor) between each wire and
the box. Better yet, confine the area where wires enter and leave the
box to a small space or window so that all the ground connections can be
made in the same spot. Again, no noise, no lightning, and no damage to
contents inside the box.

It works. I`ve done it.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

I should have advised you to clamp the voltage on each wire entering
your lightning protected enclosure to a safe maximum voltage for that
wire. The ARRL Handbook mentions several appropriate devices, fast
acting and proper breakdown voltage range to protect your equipment.
These protectors are used in addition to the filtering which is used for
low-level noise elimination.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

In article ,
Bob Miller wrote:

Is there a good layman's book on grounding amateur gear? Ask 10 hams a
grounding question and you get 11 answers :-)

Well, I won't claim that it's layman-level or that it's small, but I
do keep a copy of the U.S. Government's military handbook on grounding
on my server's website:

http://www.radagast.org/~dplatt/hamr...-grounding.pdf

Lots of good information there about ground rods, bonding, making
solid connections between elements of the ground system, etc.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Richard Harrison wrote:
"Is there a good layman`s book on grounding amateur gear?"

The ARRL Handbook for starters, My newest is the 1987 edition. It has
several pages of good suggestions on "The National Electrical Code",
protective devices, and lightning protection. They suggest books and
pamphlets to request for planning your installation.

There is also plenty of information on the ARRL website. The ARRL
Technical Information Service contains good information on a huge range
of technical questions:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/

For an overview on grounding, and how the separate requirements for
mains safety, lightning and RF grounding join together, start with:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/grounding.html

Searching the whole ARRL site for "grounding" brings up other references
as well.

By the way, almost all homes in the UK are categorically exempt from
specific lightning protection requirements in the Wiring Regulations...
but that also means we are not very lightning-conscious, and UK radio
amateurs tend to be very careless about bonding of mains earths and RF
earths. This is a case where we'd do much better to follow US earthing
principles, if we possibly can.


--
73 from Ian G3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek