I am using an 8ft ground rod antenna mast is clamped to the ground rod. mast is 15ft. and antenna is a sigma4. noticing a increase in static level this summer. a local station suggested watering my ground rod. this dropped the static froms5 - s7 to s2-s4after watering the area by the ground rod the static drops slowly. and stays lower for a few days.this cycle has been repeated several times in the past few months. so it seems that improving the ground helps reduce static. 8ft copper plated steel ground rod at the base of the mast and clamped to the mast. radio is an icom 718 static level is with the preamp on. noise dropped from s5-s7 to s2 tos-4 in a few hours.