New Sirio Tornado 27

[Steve_Buckeye]

Looks nice, How did you set-up the grounds????

 

[camaro1]

your concrete job looks a little SKETCHY,,,, should have used a regular house bracket, that would have moved the tower out about 8-12" from the house then you could have been centered in your concrete hole

 

[Galaxy 959]

Grounding is not done yet. The 2 legs next to the house are ran against my footing of the house which is 3' deep.

 

[Galaxy 959]

So I plan to do the grounding when I'm off Wednesday and Thursday. I plan on putting a 8' copper rod at the tower. Is #8 solid copper big enough from the tower to the ground rod? Some say to run a ground from the tower rod to the main house ground also. Is #8 solid copper big enough for that also? It will be about 45' from rod to rod.

 

[Steve_Buckeye]

So I plan to do the grounding when I'm off Wednesday and Thursday. I plan on putting a 8' copper rod at the tower. Is #8 solid copper big enough from the tower to the ground rod? Some say to run a ground from the tower rod to the main house ground also. Is #8 solid copper big enough for that also? It will be about 45' from rod to rod.

I always heard grounding material should be braid or flat copper strap otherwise your ground could turn into an antenna or ground loop. Grounding the tower to the mains ground is a building code item in some states.

 

[Galaxy 959]

I always heard grounding material should be braid or flat copper strap otherwise your ground could turn into an antenna or ground loop. Grounding the tower to the mains ground is a building code item in some states.

I've heard that to. I thought that was for vehicles though. Maybe someone else will chime in. I know my ground at the meter box on the rod is solid copper.

 

[Old_Crow]

I'm running 3/4" flat copper braid from my antenna switches ground lugs inside the garage to a copper ground rod 1 foot away from the garage. Also I use adapters to convert 3 pin ac to 2 pin on my power supplies. So far I have no ground loops or RF problems. Hope this helps.

 

[Steve_Buckeye]

I'm running 3/4" flat copper braid from my antenna switches ground lugs inside the garage to a copper ground rod 1 foot away from the garage. Also I use adapters to convert 3 pin ac to 2 pin on my power supplies. So far I have no ground loops or RF problems. Hope this helps.

I do something similar, also I put toroid's on most of my longer speaker cables, mic cables and coax. Also don't daisy chain you grounds, try to run all grounds separate to a common bus which then Leeds to the outside ground.

 

[Onelasttime]

No amount of DC grounding would truly protect from a lightning strike! Get real! If all that happened was a blown out insulator the metal parts did not melt or vaporize like a welding rods I would say you where doing great and you did not take a direct hit either. I have seen coax flash over like flash paper and a room light up like someone was arc welding. Most times when equipment would get taken out but was repairable it was not hit directly by lightning but received a surge down a power line or got an extreme amount of induced voltage like and EMP situation but not quite so extreme direct hits always destroyed gear beyond repair if anything less than true commercial grade lightning protection was not in place. I used to work on insanely powerful transmission lines in the power industry and you would not believe how much power is leaking out of those lines. Multiply that exponentially like comparing a 100 watt incandescent bulb to the sun that is the order of magnitude we are talking about from a true direct hit.

DC grounding is a good idea it never hurts but it will not magical save an antenna from a direct strike by lighting that is shear fantasy! It is not even meant to protect against lightning strikes to the antenna I do not know where people get that idea. That is almost as silly as people thinking that putting a ground plane antenna close tot he ground will improve long distance propagation but raising it up will reduce this and make the antenna only good for short range local communication. I heard it tonight on youtube from not less than 3 different British guys talking about Sirro Gain Master antenna's and one American! I guess they have never heard about ground loss??? Also the AP antenna and I think the Starduster-400 people said similar things and I found this mind boggling just the thought of a ground plane antenna for HF magically losing performance with added height above the ground is hard to wrap ones mind around given the height of broadcast antenna past and present and the propagation that aircraft enjoy with fairly low power and compromised antenna due to height above the ground!

It is too bad though that the insulators are not holding up I was thinking abut giving one of these antenna's a go due to price point. I have a generic clone of the Star Duster-400 but I am not sure who made it. I picked it on clearance from Copper for $39 a few months back or maybe it was $49 but I had $39 of credit from a return I had forgotten about months in advance on paypal so it was really $10 in mind since I had forgotten about the credit sitting in the account. I just moved into this house 11 months ago and the ground was frozen for a large chunk of that. This place does not even have a TV antenna tower. The siding is commercial grade steel siding and the shingles are foil backed on the house so my Dipole in the attic was fruitless!

You know guys a sticky with reviews of currently available ground planes and durability issues would be sweet. A lot of you older guys are such a wealth of information on both old designs, modern clones and new designs. It would super cool to have an easy guide to secret gem to hunk of junk that did not involve hours of research on this site.

I appreciate all the really FANTASTIC information on this site but it is kind of like digging for gold! Their is a lot of boring hard work and chatter for each tiny gold nugget of great info!