RHF wrote:
For One and All,

Transforming your simple Ground Rod into a Ground Anchor :
Is It Worth The Work ? - You Decide !

Building a Ground Anchor :
"IF" - You can not Bury your Coax Cable for the full run from the House
to your Antenna.
Starting at your remotely located Ground Rod far away from the House.
Take a 10 Foot piece of 1/2" Copper Pipe and an Copper Elbow.
Cut the Pipe at 18" and Solder the two pieces of Pipe together using
the Elbow.
Dig a 12" Deep 8-10 Foot long Trench from the Ground Rod toward the
House.
Run your Coax Cable through the Pipe.
Put a PL-259 Plug or other Connector on the End of the Coax Cable to
Connect to your Antenna.
Empty Half a Bag of Cat-Litter along the Trench.
Place the Pipe with the Coax Cable in it in the Trench.
Secure the Short Vertical Section of the Pipe to the Ground Rod with
three evenly
spaced Hose Clamps.
TIP - Now is a good time to add any other Ground Radials if you wish.
Empty the other Half a Bag of Cat-Litter along the Trench.
Wet down the bottom of the Trench.
Fill the Trench with Dirt.
Wet down the Dirt returned to the Trench.
NOTE - This much more work then the simple Two Ferrite Snap-On Cores at
each end of the Coax Cable. But it will kill the majority of the RFI
getting to the Antenna.
PLUS - The simple Ground Rod has been transformer into a "Ground
Anchor" with both a Deep Vertical Rod and a Shallow Horizontal Tube
enclosing the Coax Cable.


OK - Everybody get out you old GI Trenching Tool and buy some Copper
Pipe - It's Time to get Anchored ! and Well Grounded Too ! - iane ~ RHF
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By placing the coax inside of a copper tubepipe you have in effect
created a triax
cable. Triax can (as in might or maybe) solve certain hard to control
RFI engress issues.

I doubt the wisdom of bending coax in a tight 90 degree angle.
I have seen coax fail with such tight bends.

What type kitty litter are you sugesting? The clumping kind has a water
absorbing,
clay, Bentonite?(sorry Yoder) that is great for pakcing in around
ground rods. The
other type is just baked clay and not much better then sand.

I can say that a whole house ground ring that completly surrounds your
home, with
all incoming cables well bonded greatly reduces the noise floor on some
bands. And
oddly improves some weak signal reception. I am still trying to
understand how I can
pick up a TIS staton some 20 miles away only after I added the ground
ring.

As far as digging such a ditch with a GI trenching tool, forget it. An
electrician
frined had a ditch witch that he had rented for a big job that took a
lot less time
then he had thought. So he stopped by and ditched my entire perimeter
in a couple
of hours. the thought of doing it by hand mankes me want to cry.

Terry