Earthing and Grounding in Your Ham Radio Station.

Thanks Peter, I have been fretting over this very issue.

I had a most unfortunate situation with a nearby lightning strike. My house is protected with lightning rods, but lightning struck somewhere very close by the building. The energy entered the neutral side of my house mains. The high voltage passed through an Astron power supply and melted the insulation on the transformer. The voltage then exited through the negative terminal of the Astron and went through the power cable to my Yaesu FTDX 3000. The 25 amp fuse on that negative line blew, but also the actual fuse holder melted. The voltage exited through the Yaesu, I don't know where exactly, but the radio ceased to function. Sent the radio in for repair, but every circuit card was bad - beyond economic repair. No voltage entered through the positive power feed nor through the antenna which I had neglected to disconnect. So now my procedure is to unplug the power supply and disconnect the antenna coax. This same lightning strike destroyed a second power supply and a APRS station in an entirely different location in my house - same scenario, the negative power lead directed energy to a 2 meter radio and TNC. The energy destroyed a computer monitor in yet a third location in my house. All in all a very expensive event. I would have had to had all this equipment unplugged from the mains to prevent this. 73, Mark Julicher WX3O PS, I really liked that FTDX 3000, but am consoling myself with an 899a.

This has been one of your best videos to date, you have opened a can of worms though, after all if you get a transceiver, that is connected to a tuner and a linear and a SWR meter, then all the outer wire of the coax is basically earthing out each of the units, add earthing of all of 5he units as well and you can get earth loops which can be pretty deadly, AntenneX has published articles on this a lot, An Artificial Ground like the one that MFJ used to make is perfect for sorting out bad earths in the shack. Thanks Peter.

I did just what you said years ago when I was working on my General and CW (when the US license required 13 wpm). My shack was on the 2nd floor. I had ran a ground wire up from a ground rod but still wasn't enough. I would get a rf shock off the key. Boy did that bite hurt! I put quarter wave lengths of wire off the ground lug of my MFJ manual tuner and ran them under the baseboard around the shack. Did the trick. No more "shocks"! Robert KD4YDC

Very informative and timely video - at least for me - since I'm installing a new EFHW antenna for 40m through 10m here at my QTH. I also saw the ARRL video presentation of K6WX and I think your video helps clarify things even better. Thanks a bunnch Peter! David, K7KDE

Good stuff peter. More rot gets talked about "earth" than pretty much any other subject in amateur radio. Nice to hear some clarity

Great video Peter! the mysterious and elusive "earth", took me years to get my head around it and restrict my efforts to things that were actually do-able! One aspect you only tangentially touched on, bonding equipment together. It made me think about those rigs that are 12V powered. Whether intended for vehicular or base operation, you can not assume the negative lead is connected to chassis and so you dont know for certain about its earthed status. Similarly, the power supplies for 12V rigs, again you cant assume the negative output is chassis or earthed. What anyone needs to do about these rigs and PSUs will be different depending on whether you are addressing RF grounding or power safety earthing. 73 de G0AFV

Thanks for doing this video. I was the one that requested it. It's such a confusing subject, not helping by most of the information being US based. I really appreciate you trying to clear things up.

What I hear regularly is "I have high receive noise, a good earth will cure it". Yet, I have never seen any evidence for that. Most noise seems to be picked up by the aerial system. Earthing seems to have become a bit of a superstition. It's different in the southern USA where you need lightning protection.

If only this come out last week when I was bannging a big copper spike into the garden and stripping the plastic off a roll of copper wire brading it to protect my new FT 991 A ? God I love this hobby :)

Great work

Well stated, as always, Mr. Waters! Thank you. AC5MF

Always unplug every device going to the radio and accessories when there is a storm around. It pays to take no chances.

Great presentation. We rarely think of way ground wire in terms of wavelength and we should. Never thought of the 1/4 wave wire trick for RF in the shack. I wonder if that would help with other devices being effected by RF on wires like alarm systems and garage door openers. Might be worth an experiment. Here in the states, the National Electrical Code Requires any ground rod to be bonded to the rod at the point the electrical service enters the building. In the Motorola Standards and Guidelines for Communication Sites (R56) also requires the same bonding. Nothing in either mention RF as a reason. Here in the U.S. we use 60 Hertz for power and 1/4 wavelength (using the standard antenna formula) would be 776.5 miles long (!!) so the chance of of having a 1/4 wavelength ground wire for our AC power anywhere is pretty remote. But as you and K6WX state, at the upper frequencies we use, a 1/4 wave ground wire is not uncommon and with 10 meters and up, multiple 1/4 wavelengths may likely occur. And as lightning acts as a high frequency signal (essentially a pulse of energy with a very fast rise time, short duration and fast decay) it too may see our ground wire as a 1/4 wave (or odd multiple of) wire which could look like a high impedance and find a lower impedance path through our equipment.

Thank you Peter…I also viewed the k6 video. I experimented yesterday using an antenna analyzer (RigExpert Stick 500) on 40 and 20 meters just to verify if SWR, resistance or reactance changed with the station ground attached vs unattached. All remained constant…i.e. the station ground (8 ft copper rod with a seven foot #6 gauge wire) didn’t affect my station on those two bands…just had to prove it to myself👍

Great advice Peter! My shack is on the second floor of my home with wire antennas <25' above the roof. I am in the near field of all my HF antennas which puts radiated RF in my shack. I've found that I need an RF ground plane on each of my equipment shelves to equalize the RF potential and prevent ground loops. I use aluminum flashing for this purpose and have my shelf ground planes connected at several points and all my equipment ground terminals. Before I did this I had a hot MIC and key on some bands. Now everything is fine and my noise level went down a bit. W6QR

Peter, this is excellent! I know many extra class hams (and a few engineers) who do not understand this concept, so thank you for discussing it. It is vital to understand as it is part of the very foundation of current flow in any circuit. Keep up the great work. 73 OM

wow thank you Peter ive listened to the lecture, shocker pun pun, once again thank you

As an audio comms engineer pre retirement Earth Loop ie multiple earth paths were a major issue. What was pushed at me when I started rf on retirement was allabout earthing so I did my ground rods and linking equpt. Following the dangers of remote earth on PMS Mains I have gone back to basics and only use earth for mains safety. Thanks for formalising this.

I watched the full ARRL lecture on this when it was released. Very interesting.