Grounding Questions

[ke7azd]

I need to ground my new HF radio and my tuner. Can I jump from to the other then to the ground bar or do I need a separate ground wire for each of them? I have a solid green wire through the window board and down to my 4" copper rod.

I wasn't sure how far from the metal skirting around my house so I put out between 12" and 18".


I could not find a copper bolt to pass through the window board so I used a stainless steel. We don't get a lot of lightning here.


73's

[Transwarp]

Grounding is not as straight forward as it used to be, in the sense that you banged copper rods into the ground for your equipment and antennas and job done. There's far more technical knowledge members on here than me so l'm sure you'll get some guidance info from in due course, however in the meantime have a look on YouTube as there's plenty of videos about the subject.

Also to mention there's electrical safety considerations to take into account which is dependant on how your property is wired and supplied by the distribution network, there are in the UK different types used (TT, TN-C, PME etc) and as such it's important to know how your property is wired and supplied before doing any grounding / earthing work.

[Auldgeek]

Separate connections from each bit of equipment to a buzz bar or other common location, then a single connection to your main ground.

[Transwarp]

I once experimented many years back by running my shack off battery power only and grounding the equipment to a copper rod in the ground and then removing the ground connection.

What l found was that when powered by PSU's with no grounding there was hash / noise and all the rest during the day but much reduced on a night. With grounding the 'rubbish' level seemed the same during the day but weak signal reception seemed a bit better. During the evening background hash seemed worse with ground attached.

With just 12v battery power running my gear and no grounding there was less background 'rubbish' then being on mains juice, and with grounding the weak signal clarity was again present but during the day it wasn't noticeable as much.

Of course the main thing about grounding / earthing is for safety, but it can also sometimes have other benefits.

[paulears]

people seem to use 'grounding' as a really generic term now. Consider what you are doing it for? 24/7electrical safety, or interference reduction, antenna performance, lightning protection? all about grounding, but quite different thing.