RadioBanter - Grounding question

I am setting up my new Butternut HF9V ground mounted vertical on the side of
my house. Right next to the antenna I have driven a ground rod that I will
attach my antenna and radials to. The question I have is will it be OK to
attach a ground wire from my shack to it too, or should I drive another
ground rod that is separate for my shack only? If I drive another rod it
will be about 8 feet away from my antennas ground rod.

The National Electric Code, and thus most local building codes,
require that each building structure have only one "ground system".
In order to meet this requirement, all ground rods must be "bonded"
together with direct runs of heavy-gauge wire (6-gauge in most areas,
I believe).

The common 8' copper-plated-steel ground rods which are used for
lightning protection are good for that, but by themselves they don't
make terribly good RF grounds. You get a better RF ground by using a
number of shorter rods, a few feet or yards apart, bonded together
with heavy wire.

In your case, I'd drive in two ground rods - one as close as possible
to the shack (to which you ground your rig, with a wire that's as
short as possible), and one at the antenna. Bond them together with a
heavy copper wire, buried a few inches under the soil surface. This
should help meet the NEC bonding rule, and will also give you a better
RF ground than you'd get by running a ground wire all the way out to
the antenna. If you're feeling lavish, run some additional ground
wires outwards from your close-to-the-shack ground rod, and bury
'em... that'll help improve the quality of this RF ground somewhat.

Another question I have, and am concerned about is that my vertical will be
about 25 feet away from my
neighbors Dish Network satellite dish. Is that going to be a problem for me
and will TVI cause problems?

The satellite feed itself should be unaffected by the RF, I'd think -
the HF frequencies are far too low to be picked up by the dish's LNB.
I have an HF dipole located about 50' from our DirecTV dish, and
haven't seen any sign of interference.

You might end up with problems at the TV set itself, if your RF
"breaks in" to the TV's electronics via the antenna cable, or via the
power or speaker wiring. This is more likely to happen at higher
power levels, of course... keeping your transmissions below about 20
watts seems to help prevent most such RF breakin.

At your end, you might want to consider adding an auxiliary low-pass
filter to your transmitter output, just to make sure you aren't
transmitting harmonic content outside the HF bands. Check around your
property for any loose, corroded metal junctions (e.g. old steel
gutters and downspouts, fences, etc.), and if necessary clean 'em up
and bond them - corroded junctions can act as rectifiers, and turn
clean HF energy into a burst of harmonics that can cause TVI. These
won't affect Dish Network reception, but could affect folks who are
still picking up VHF channels via over-the-air antennas.

You might want to consider stocking up on a good-sized handful of
clamp-on ferrite RF chokes. If your neighbors complain about TVI or
RFI or telephone interference, give 'em the chokes and tell them to
snap them onto the wiring of the affected appliances, as close as
possible to the chassis (make several turns of wire through the
ferrite if possible).

Legally, you are _not_ responsible for RFI problems if they're due to
strong-signal overload/pickup and if your transmissions are "clean"
(in-band, acceptably low harmonic content). However, it's often a very
politically-wise and friendly thing to do, if you help affected
neighbors eliminate such unwanted RF pickup... it might save you the
trouble of having to deal with complaints from your neighborhood
association, or even action re CC&Rs that your antenna may violate.

--
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!