Station Ground
Five years after becoming licensed, I’ve finally got around to putting a formal station earth / ground in situ comprising 2 x four foot copper rods and a liberal amount of copper wire into the ground on the front lawn. Instead of cutting the last 8 foot off, I used a lawn edger and shoved the copper about 4 inches into the lawn until there was two foot left. Looking around wondering what to do with this, I spotted my massive hammer drill with 24 inch 20mm drill bit. Clearly, it was asking me to drill a hole into the lawn and shove the remainer into it! I did. So I now have 2 x four foot and 1 x 24 inch ground. No idea if this remainder will do any use at all. You never know.
They say one has to reduce the run of copper cable connecting the station to the ground as short as possible - and in this case, I’m running at about 8 feet prior to the first copper rod.
The bad news is that I managed to crack one of the 3 x 2 slabs outside the front door. Wendy is delighted because it means, to use the US expressions, we’ll have to re-model the front! Grrr.
Technically, I have no idea why this new ground will make a difference however my good friend Terry (G4MKP) put a load of copper in the ground a couple of years ago, connected everything to it and all his interference went away. Finger crossed, I might experience the same. I’ll connect up tonight and let you know.
[Later] Terry says that instead of connecting the earth to each grounding post, I should probably connect the earth to just one of the lugs. The thinking it’s unliikely for a single ground to induce a ground loop and in the case of a station “funny” it’s easy to disconnect the earth for problem solving.
The other thing he pointed out is that my bus-bar should be ideally gold :)
Hi Callum,
I read your grounding article with interest and see you have quite a modern house, how did you deal with the issue of PME mains earth and external grounds?
Comment by ian | March 22, 2008
Hello Ian,
I didn’t deal with it Ian. I’ve just gone and done it because I did a calculation in my head that there’s less risk of something going wrong WITH this ground system than not.
It’s bloody mine field in my opinion. I have a good mind to completely disconnect the internal station mains ground and use mine instead. You have to remember that it’s quite possible to end up in this scenario just by building a standard radial system for a vertical - which I’ll be doing in the spring.
I’d welcome constructive ideas to assist in my thinking for this one. It looks like both Ian and I need a hand.
Callum
M0MCX
Comment by callum | March 22, 2008