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Quick Question on older house electrical

KB1UGX

Member
May 21, 2010
52
0
16
What is the effect, or disadvantage of having a house that has the old 2 prong plugs in the wall and having to use the stupid 2 to 3 prong plug adapter

You have no ground right? That cant be good for a ham shack lol

Would that have any thing to do with poor RX?
 

What I did was run dedicated service with ground, plus added more ground for a closer ground source. You can't have too much ground.
 
Thanks for the idea. Wish i was able to do that here

However, i live in an apartment

What is the effect of not having the 3rd Ground Prong though?

Im curious what the resulting effect is.

For example i have equally poor receive on most bands
 
The third wire is strictly a safety ground, and should not have any effect on your receive. You might have a hot chassis on some equipment,(older tube equipment), and if you do,just pull the plug out of the socket, turn it over and plug it back in.
If your house is wired with BX cable, or greenfield, ( metal armored cable) or conduit, and not Knob and Tube, you do have the safety ground on the plate screw, which is where you put the screw on the adapter.
 
Thanks packrat

To say my RX is poor, would be a slight exageration

Its just not as good as i would like.

But, a Ham antenna Is NEVER good enough and can always be better right?

I am also listening to bands that the current antenna is not resonant on so could that also be a reason why the rx isnt AWESOME!

Im just assuming so.
I know some monitor HF activity on like cb whips as you once told me.

Im starting to experiment with 20 and 40 but if i cant hear them i sure as heck cant tx to them

I was just curious if this would have any effect.

I heard from a freind that i could clamp a cable to the back of the heat sink on the radio to the radiator of my apartment and that would give me an (ok) ground

I suppose it cant hurt
Thanks for the info
 
Last edited:
No problem. I wouldn't clamp anything to the heatsink, but there should be a ground lug, screw, terminal on the back of the radio, and you can run a wire from that to a copper water pipe, or some other grounded metal, maybe even your fire escape would be better than nothing. What radio are you running again?
 
No problem. I wouldn't clamp anything to the heatsink, but there should be a ground lug, screw, terminal on the back of the radio, and you can run a wire from that to a copper water pipe, or some other grounded metal, maybe even your fire escape would be better than nothing. What radio are you running again?

I got the yaesu 857D

Although im kicking my self in the rear wishing i bought a 950
:(

I thought i really wanted to have vhf/uhf so i bought the 857
Turns out i use my old icom dual bander more then anything and rarley ever use vhf/uhf on the 857

Live and learn i guess
I might end up ebaying it and buying an 950
Will see
I didnt notice a ground lug but ive been known to miss stuff before
 
That happens a lot with the all in one radios. Great radio, but you just don't use everything.

You are quite right regarding no lug on the back, but you can just use one of the mounting bracket holes to ground it.

PR
 
Along the lines of what Packrat said...

One thing you can also do is pull the socket out of the box and look to see if the box is metal or plastic. Often the metal ones are grounded in some way. You can test this with an ohm meter or a simple circuit tester. If you find that the box is grounded, you can just buy a new socket (they're only a couple of bucks) and run a ground wire for the safety ground on the plug and screw it to the back of the box using a sheet metal screw. You're supposed to use #12 wire, but even #14 is fine for such a short run. Sometimes those boxes are really small and it's difficult to cram that much thick wire back into the box. I did this to my whole house years ago.

Here's a site that shows the procedure and pics: How To Convert Two-Prong Outlets To Three-Prong
 

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