Jeff Dieterle wrote:
I'm installing a 60ft self-supporting tower. It will have a vhf/uhf antenna
with rotator and a couple of satellite dishes on it. The tower will be set
in a concrete apprx. 4'x4'x4'. Is driving a copper clad 5/8"x8ft ground rod
and attaching a #6cu ground wire to the tower leg sufficient.
I live in a heavily wooded area and have lost several modems to lighting
strikes. Now when it looks like thunder 2 states away I unplug them on my
computers and Directv receivers.

Jeff,

You really need to go to professional sources and not listen to advice
from random internet responses on safety issues. There is so much
folklore and pure bunk that is accepted as fact that it can really get
you in trouble.

Look at the polyphaser web site and read their techninal notes
carefully.

The single most important thing is cable routing and bonding of
equipment to common points.

Most lightning damage people get isn't from tower hits, it is from hits
on power lines that flow back through the house to grounds!

Every cable entering the house should be grounded to ONE common point.
That includes telco, cable TV, power mains, your station ground, and
all your cables entering the house. That is a NEC requirement!! That's
the single most important thing you can do to prevent damage.

Everything leaving the tower should leave at the tower bottom, and be
grounded to the tower at the tower bottom, and that point shuld be
grounded to earth. That's the single most impotant thing you can do at
the tower.

73 Tom

I have no argument with getting professional advice. I hired pro's to
install the lightning rods. They were in agreement that I should
always provide a protective ground other than my equipment. They had
no problem with the fact that I went through the basement ceiling with
a number 6 wire atttaching a cable TV ground to the power panel
ground. It was the shortest route.

When I lived in a house with copper plumbing the ground system ran all
over the houe.

On 28 Jun 2006 06:52:37 -0700, wrote:



You really need to go to professional sources and not listen to advice
from random internet responses on safety issues. There is so much
folklore and pure bunk that is accepted as fact that it can really get
you in trouble.

Look at the polyphaser web site and read their techninal notes
carefully.

John Ferrell W8CCW