A big difficulty with my antenna installation was grounding. An antenna must have a ground, both to “work”, but also to provide static discharge to discourage lightning strikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If lighting strikes a typical antenna, it will vaporize and likely damage any equipment attached to it – that is not what the safety ground is designed to prevent. Rather, it attempts to discharge pre-lightning voltage build-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An ideal ground is directly below the antenna, with a 6 foot or so rod driven into the soil. However, if that is done, it is also crucially<\/em> important to “bond” that ground rod with any others on the property (such as one installed by the electric company.) The reason this is so important is that if lighting strikes the utility lines, it wants to find its way to ground, and will happily do that through your house wiring to find your radio ground, if the two ground rods are not bonded. The reverse is also true if lighting strikes the antenna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in my case that would have meant running the AWG 6 (!!) bonding wire through a rock wall, which was rather impractical. So, instead, I opted to run the safety ground above ground, mounted under the deck, and connect up to the inter-system ground that was installed at my electrical panel in 2017 when that panel was replaced. That connection then connects it to the utility ground rod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some photos:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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