One of the key tenets of grounding your ham radio station is to eliminate ground loops. All equipment grounds should run to a single point, which is then connected to your ground rod. This photo shows my single point ground. It’s not fancy, but it does the job.
Single point ground for my ham radio station. It consists of a short length of copper pipe. Various grounds are clamped to it. At the very left end, you can just see where it’s clamped to a length of #2 wire that goes out to the ground rod, only a few feet away.
You will undoubtedly do yours differently, but sometimes it’s nice to have a point of reference, so there you are! Note that the #2 wire to ground is likely overkill, but I happened to have a piece long enough. You can see a nice drawing of the concept in the ARRL General Class License Manual, Seventh Edition page 5-25, Figure 5-20, which I do not reproduce here for copyright reasons.
Hello Dave- sorry to resurrect an old thread. Basic q: is it correct or even necessary to have 2 ground rods- one at my vertical and the other at my station? I have a 1/4 wave (40M) flagpole vertical with 30 1/4 wave radials. Compared to an end fed Zepp I tried, Im astounded at how well the flagpole works especially w a set of power lines nearby. Anyway, I took a close lightning strike the other day. Loud, power went out for several moments, I found out the next day that my coax arrestor at the flagpole was obliterated. Presently, the only ground is to an 8 copper rod at my flagpole tied to the radials and an arrestor- all of which is 100 from my station. The coax run is underground. Its a new station and I have not completed the station setup. So.. is it advised to have a 2nd 8 station ground rod – tied to something like what youve depicted in this thread- running to a ground rod immediately outside my station? If so, will a 2nd coax arrestor tied to that rod and station help or be advised?
Keith, it should not be an issue. If you have metal water pipes that go through the concrete wall, you can try grounding to them. This may or may not be effective, as outside the wall the pipes may be plastic. Alternately, drive a ground rod just outside where your station is, and keep the wire from the ground rod to your station as short as you can. 73, Dave
Hi Dave,
Some great stuff here! I’m looking to start my shack and I have one concern about grounding. At issue is that my shack will be in the basement. So as you may guess I will need to run up to ground buy going up and over the concrete wall.
Is this an issue?
Thanks
Hi Dave, I do the same thing for the most part. I have a 3/4″ copper pipe attached to the wall behind the station. I used a copper ground clamp at several locations along the pipe for attaching the various grounds for all my equipment as opposed to using stainless steel worm-gear clamps.
I have a #3 copper stranded wire going from the end of the copper pipe to the outside of the house where I have an 8 foot 5/5″ dia. ground rod driven nearly the full 8 feet. I have it where the drain spout comes off the house so as to keep that area very wet in dry season. If we get a bad dry spell, which does not happen often here in New England, I then hose the area down or let the garden hose drip all night. Good info Dave, I hope people heed your good advice.
73’s
KA1VEI
Dick