My head hurts after all this. What most of us probably need is a very simple diagram showing what to ground where--pictures of our devices rather than schematics. The EEs among us can do this via schematics, but most hams--passed tests notwithstanding--are NOT electrical engineers.
Point taken. I plan on making additional grounding video's with demos. That said, I do encourage every Ham to broaden their understating of Ohms law and wire diagrams as this is a technical hobby. The circuits shown in this video are considered simple circuits that are found in our houses.
This applies mainly to hams with complex high power stations on HF and VHF with multiple equipment units. Such a station would include base rigs, amplifiers, computers, monitors towers and beam antennas, as well as numerous accessories. Meaning they have a lot of interconnections. Your point is that your average beginner station is not covered by these tips. That is correct because the presentation is too complex and difficult to understand in order to ascertain how to design grounding for a specific station.
So, by doing everything that I can to prevent making a ground loop, I end up unintentionally making a ground loop. Simple solution is to unplug the radio from the power supply and plug it into my battery. No more ground loops. Now I will begin banging my head on the wall. It also sounds like a test to see how much noise is eliminated when switching between the two. Thank you and 73s
I think I'll have to watch this 7 or 8 more times to understand it. So much new to consider like I need radials off my 8' shack ground rod!? And will have to try again to find the hidden ground rod associated with the AC panel to bond with the shack ground rod. At least my 12V power supply (Samlex) doesn't have a jumper between the 12v negative and the case, so they are isolated. Thanks for the thorough explanations, now I just have to understand them...
There is a lot of info in this. It most likely will help watching it a few times. My house was built in 1990 and the electric service panel is mounted to an outside wall on my garage. The ground rod is inside my garage, right behind the electric panel. That's good to hear about your power supply.
I have watched many of Mike Holt's presentations on you tube, and thought I had a gained a better understanding of the subject as a result. Watching this did not help, perhaps I got stuck mentally on the first diagram that showed a #14 wire circuit being "protected" with a 20 amp fuse. While I want to understand how to do this properly & avoid ground loops, etc, I agree with other comments that some simple "do this; don't do that" diagrams would be very useful, especially since manufacturers are creating even more problems with their instructions. Some photos of the jumpers that should be removed on various power supplies would be of great interest as well.
I can not begin to tell you how many hams do not understand the difference between grounding & bonding. The concept of a single point ground makes folks blow a gasket. I'm an electrical engineer, an electrician since 1985 and a ham since 1990. It really, really bothers me that TH-cam hams (many) have instructional videos on how to ground antennas, including dipoles. Many of them just drive a random ground rod, many feet from the house, use a grounding block and run it back to the house. And all the people jump on the bandwagon and say "I'm going to do this" I can't tell you how many folks argue with me about the necessity of a single point ground and a required discharge unit before it enters the house.
I, by in large, have a better understanding of how to ground properly now, but there is much more info here than needed. The bulk of material here makes assumptions about standard knowledge regarding electrical circuits, ohms law, and differences between impedance and resistance. I don't believe that what most HAMs need are learning lessons, but more along the lines of an an episode from This Old House kind of format. I would really like to see a follow up video that takes a real world approach of investigating an existing HAM shack, showing how to make some basic measurements, show the mistakes found, and how to implement the corrective actions. THAT would be much more effective and a video like that would harness you twice as many views and future subscribers in my opinion. Most of us don't like lectures, although the information is appreciated by many like myself. Most people prefer the "field day" approach of realistic presentations with lots of terms like: "see, this is what I'm talking about" and followed with "and now lets fix this." Great job AI5DH and thanks for the informative presentation!
My equipment chassis ground points are linked together and internally connected to the AC 3rd line ground. My ATU had has a ground connection lug that goes to my ground rod and not the AC grounds: I need to isolate AC from DC.
I have lived in this house for 31 years, built in 1930, brought to electrical code in 1993 when we bought the place. It is in a historic district with the power and phone lines lines on poles in the alley. I had a (small) lightening strike probably 25 years ago on the phone line - remember when we had landlines and dial up? It took out the phones and computers/modems, etc. Insurance paid for it back in those days. Not much you can do about the phone lines although the lines were properly installed. I now have fiber and have eliminated all the lines, except the power line, that comes from the alley. Maybe 15 or so years ago, my son and I were standing outside when another (small) lightening strike struck my 30 foot tower and yagi. Sparks fell on our head as we were standing under it. I physically disconnect my equipment when not in use from my antennas. None of my equipment was damaged but I took down the yagi and changed the coax and gamma match and all was OK. Fortunately, it did not damage my rotor. My tower is grounded by a large braid. That is it. I can't dig up my back yard and fill if full of radials for my little tower. We just to the best we can. That is pretty much all we can do. 73 WA4QGA
I never hear it mentioned in these talks with relationship to Grounds and electrical noise ! That is, especially if you're utilities are above ground, but depending on proximity to power lines, it is common to have voltage induced into antennas from those power lines ! (Yes...,without direct connection !) Which I can imagine translates into potential noise, if not worse in your receiver ?
So, if a piece of AC equipment has a 3 prong plug (3rd wire being ground from the main panel), we do not bond the chassis to out shack common ground bar?
I like the discussion at 20 minutes about the difference you should see between ground and neutral at the outlet with a load. If there's no difference, some character has probably tied the neutral and ground pins together to fool the outlet testers.
I listened to the entire presentation and came to this conclusion: I'm not going to override the knowledge of major companies like Astron and Icom, who don't put superfluous circuits in their equipment. The idea about WHY major manufacturers tell us to fuse both negative and positive power cables on direct-to- battery mobile radio installations also makes sense to me. I'll do it exactly like the manufacturer recommends.
I have the Astron SS-30M-AP (mfg date 2022) before I open it up, I went ahead and emailed Astron about the bonding jumper between chassis and DC negative (also pointed out the possibility of chassis paint being in the way which could negate a chassis connection which I saw mentioned a lot online). One thing that I am a tad confused on, is if I need to run a ground connection to every device in my Ham Shack that is plugged into the same outlet and/or connected to radio gear? I have a 24" monitor attached to my Yaesu FTDX10 and separate SP30 speaker, there is an LDG EX-100 ATU controller, a Yaesu FTM200R, the Wires-X Yaesu HRI-200, the Astron SS30M-AP... And then because of Wires-X being attached to from the FTM200R and HRI-200 over to my laptop setup. Does that mean now potentially, I have to attach the chassis's of all my laptop setup into the same ground bar? (monitors, speakers, NAS, laptop, woofer, etc)
I had NO idea Radials were for lighting Have 60 radials on my vertical and 4 ground rods around the vertical then coax underground to another ground rod that grounds the coax shield to the ground rod before it enters the house. I could not bring in my coax by my Electric Mains. I need to connect the house power ground rod to my radio room ground rod outside the house. It’s like 55 feet away. I did run a wire in the basement that connects the 2 ground rods. I’ll have to change that. It wound be interesting to see that Astron mod.
Antenna radials make an excellent lightning ground if you use bare wire just beneath the surface. This is why all commercial AM radio towers use bare wire. Have no clue why hams use insulated wire. Uncle Elmer perhaps?
Seems to me the AC ground bond to chassis would be for safety, but good question about the DC ground bond. Maybe they were still thinking in terms of "safety" for the 13.8v DC? In case you stick your tongue on the PS case at the same time the positive filter capacitor faults to a short condition and your hand was on your ham radio chassis 😂
Awesome video @Ham Radio TV and thanks to Dereck for the wonderful information. All made sense 👍 Likely the component you see from positive to chassis on the DC side of your power supply is a voltage suppressor diode. This protects your radio if you get unregulated voltage above 12V across your power supply terminals... the diode will conduct to a dead short and your equipment will be protected. I fixed one of my power supplies where the regulator blew and my radio blew too.. I had about 20V across the radio. A TVS in there now protects future failures.
This presentation is not very understandable. There are four different types of ground: AC power, DC power, RF, and lightning. He only vaguely alludes to these different types of ground. The point is that there is no universal ground solution for ground without introducing undesired ground loops. So for example if you have a grounded vertical antenna you will have the kind of ground loop issues he discusses if you get hit by lightning since you will have two ground points. One for the antenna and one for the AC ground.
This is a very tricky subject and we tried to break it down as best we could. Perhaps we should make more videos in the future. Are homes and business have AC ground. DC only has the negative and positive. Our DC equipment cases/enclosures should be grounded to the main AC ground, but that is not called DC ground. "RF grounding" is a misnomer. A vertical antenna has RF radials, and in most cases are not stuck into the ground but just laying there or suspended. Lighting protection is then different and should still be connected with a 6 AWG or better back to your main AC ground. Dereck does touch on a way to use your RF radials as lighting protection radials but they need to be bare wire and buried. Big picture, we can enjoy this hobby so many ways and there is always more knowledge to learn.
This was a fantastic video and finally helped understand grounding. I am curious what I should do with my FTdx5000 or any other radio with a built in PSU to unbond the chassis from electrical ground. Lots of food for thought in this video. 73 de N9LVG
At 15:00+ is illustrated battery (-) going to ground, and load (-) going to ground, which may be, but lacks (-) wire to load, so a bit of false narrative about the current flow.
@@groundguru9287 the more I look into this the more confused I get. Ground rod at incoming ac to house is on south end power supply, radio, and tuner at north end of house. Ground rod just outside window from station. What needs to be grounded to the ground rod and do I need to connect the station ground rod to the house ground rod via wire and new rod every so many feet?
I plan on having a shed in my backyard to serve as my ham shack. I am going to pour a concrete slap with rebar grid to serve as a ufer ground. My home, on a slab, also uses this method as the soil is extremely rocky. I will be running a 50 amp circuit from my home service panel about 100 ft to a subpanel in the shack. I understand spg for the shack equipment which be be grounded to the ufer beneath the shed. The subpanel will be grounded back to the main service panel. I will have two 15 amp and one 20 amp circuit in tge shed. The 20 amp is for hear and ac, one 15 amp circuit for lights and other outlets. The other 15 amp circuit will be dedicated to the dc power supply. Is this enough to ensure I don't have a ground loop issue?
I experienced a really crazy occurrence. I unplugged the coax from a base transceiver and the transceiver lost power. It didn't make sense because the +12 and - were connected to the power supply. I discovered that the negative Anderson power pole conductor was not making contact with the Anderson power pole on the power supply. How did the coax provide a ground? Well I had this transceiver and a micro-node connected to a duplexer, and the micro-node was plugged in to a different power supply. Apparently the ground was obtained by a connection from the transceiver coax -> duplexer -> micro-node coax -> micro-node -> other power supply -> wall outlet -> first power supply -> transceiver. :o I have seen instances where the fuse on a negative power lead blows, but in this case it wouldn't have helped because there is no fuse in the odd ground path.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Every transceiver power cord I have has a fuse on both positive and negative leads. I can see it being useful if the negative battery lead gets disconnected from the vehicle chassis and then the transceiver antenna ground to battery becomes the ground connection for the vehicle... bad for the transceiver.
@@kd5you1 There are other grounds in a car and automotive lights and electronics don't usually have a negative fuse themselves. So if they don't have fuses, why do it with a radio?
I have a dipole with ladder line coming down from attic, centrally located within house. Antenna not exposed to outside at all. Base of antenna ladder line is in basement where it's connected to the coax and closer to a copper water line that exits out of basement. Should I ground to that, or go further away to main power ground? I do not know if that water line is bonded back to main power ground. Please help!
However, it is neither uncommon, nor against code, to have a string of 15 amp outlets on a feed with a 20 amp fuse in the distribution panel. There are at least two such circuits required by the NEC - the two 20A small appliance circuits in the kitchen. In the UK, it is even more extreme. If I recall correctly, their circuits are all ring - e.g. both ends of the circuit are attached to the circuit breaker and the circuits are often 30 amp. They have small fuses in the plugs to protect the device wiring.
I have a 40 meter ( 7.0 MHz)ground mounted, vertical antenna attached to ladder Line to the house. From the house there is coax from the balun to the radio position. The 9:1 Balun is a DC short, internally, via the internal copper over the Ferrite windings.. One side of the ladder line goes to the antenna the other goes to ground radials. Everything is DC grounded to earth vial the ground radials. What is the proper grounding scheme with all element being grounded to earth via the radials and floating DC power to the radio?
Antenna radials are different than electrical grounding. Your radio and coax shield should be grounded via a bus or 6 awg wire to you houses service panels ground rod.
Wow! I've only been licensed 3 months and I've tried to understand grounding and bonding. I've read the grounding and bonding book and watched a half- dozen youtube videos by different experts. The one definite takeaway point is that I'm going to have to get 160' of #6AWG bare copper wire and run it around the house, across 6' of concrete to bond the ground rod outside my shack to the AC service ground. I'll work from there and do my best. All I can say at this point is that I've never been shocked (stimulated, as some old hams say) by my equipment, and I'm not aware of excessive noise, not that I would necessarily recognize it. (I WAS able to complete the 13 Colonies event last weekend, though, my initial foray into HF). Tim KI5OUN
A lot of things will work but not all are safe. This hobby is all about learning, experimenting and improving. Bottom line is to have fun and help one another.
I had asked this during the Livestream but never received an answer. At the @51:00 mark, he talks about daisy-chaining the outlets in your home creating noise. What happens if you run them in parallel instead of daisy-chaining? (For non-electricians, you do this by hooking each receptacle to the branch circuit through pigtails instead of running the circuit on one side and out the other side of the receptacle). Would this help with the line noise from other devices on the circuit and potentially eliminate the need for a dedicated circuit?
Terminology sometimes makes things more confusing. The way "daisy-chaining" was used here was to described how one 15 amp circuit continues through your house, one outlet after another. All you're house hold circuits are installed with parallel wiring, other wise after each outlet you would have voltage drop. What he was talking about is your average electronic devices have line noise filters that are for the device it's self. The manufactures do it cheaply and intentionally drop the "filtering" right on the green ground wire. This then has to travel back to the electrical panel that could be a good distance away. If you then plug your radio/power supply into this same circuit you could pick up additional noise.
Hello Patrick that is what a dedicated circuit is. I cannot add a picture but should be able to describe well enough. Think of taking a 12-Volt car battery, and connecting two long wires to the battery. One for Positive and one for Negative. Along the way we tap a radio (device) along the length of the wire for power. Example we connect 3 radios, one close to the battery, another about half way down the length, and the third one at the very end of the wire run. That is a DAISY-CHAIN circuit. Better solution is to run a dedicated circuit for each radio, or three dedicated circuits, one for each radio or Wall Receptacle.
Patrick, I am a licensed electrician and what I do is run one "feed" wire rated for the breaker I am using to a junction box in a location in the attic. Then I run four wires feeding from that junction box down to each outlet or light fixture location. It can be up to four items with each having wire capable handling the current rating of the breaker. Each branch of the circuit from the feed wire is parallel to each other. No daisey chaining...
That was a power point and not available. He does have a full right up here, that covers it: www.repeater-builder.com/tech-info/bonding/amateur-radio-bonding.html
I tried. I really was hoping I could learn something. But I could only catch about 60% to 70% of what this guy is trying to say. Just unintelligible. Very disappointed ☹️.
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My head hurts after all this. What most of us probably need is a very simple diagram showing what to ground where--pictures of our devices rather than schematics. The EEs among us can do this via schematics, but most hams--passed tests notwithstanding--are NOT electrical engineers.
Point taken. I plan on making additional grounding video's with demos. That said, I do encourage every Ham to broaden their understating of Ohms law and wire diagrams as this is a technical hobby. The circuits shown in this video are considered simple circuits that are found in our houses.
This applies mainly to hams with complex high power stations on HF and VHF with multiple equipment units. Such a station would include base rigs, amplifiers, computers, monitors towers and beam antennas, as well as numerous accessories. Meaning they have a lot of interconnections. Your point is that your average beginner station is not covered by these tips. That is correct because the presentation is too complex and difficult to understand in order to ascertain how to design grounding for a specific station.
So, by doing everything that I can to prevent making a ground loop, I end up unintentionally making a ground loop. Simple solution is to unplug the radio from the power supply and plug it into my battery. No more ground loops. Now I will begin banging my head on the wall. It also sounds like a test to see how much noise is eliminated when switching between the two.
Thank you and 73s
Thanks for the update! I'm sure you'll get it handled. If this hobby was easy, it wouldn't be as much fun! 73 K6FAK
I think I'll have to watch this 7 or 8 more times to understand it. So much new to consider like I need radials off my 8' shack ground rod!? And will have to try again to find the hidden ground rod associated with the AC panel to bond with the shack ground rod. At least my 12V power supply (Samlex) doesn't have a jumper between the 12v negative and the case, so they are isolated. Thanks for the thorough explanations, now I just have to understand them...
There is a lot of info in this. It most likely will help watching it a few times. My house was built in 1990 and the electric service panel is mounted to an outside wall on my garage. The ground rod is inside my garage, right behind the electric panel. That's good to hear about your power supply.
This might be the greatest video I have found on the subject.
Many thanks on the kind words!
I have watched many of Mike Holt's presentations on you tube, and thought I had a gained a better understanding of the subject as a result. Watching this did not help, perhaps I got stuck mentally on the first diagram that showed a #14 wire circuit being "protected" with a 20 amp fuse. While I want to understand how to do this properly & avoid ground loops, etc, I agree with other comments that some simple "do this; don't do that" diagrams would be very useful, especially since manufacturers are creating even more problems with their instructions. Some photos of the jumpers that should be removed on various power supplies would be of great interest as well.
I can not begin to tell you how many hams do not understand the difference between grounding & bonding. The concept of a single point ground makes folks blow a gasket. I'm an electrical engineer, an electrician since 1985 and a ham since 1990.
It really, really bothers me that TH-cam hams (many) have instructional videos on how to ground antennas, including dipoles. Many of them just drive a random ground rod, many feet from the house, use a grounding block and run it back to the house. And all the people jump on the bandwagon and say "I'm going to do this"
I can't tell you how many folks argue with me about the necessity of a single point ground and a required discharge unit before it enters the house.
@@ajm6409 🎯💯
Glad to see a grounding video with a true SME. Most of the ham TH-cam channels are guessing or repeating things on the topic of grounding.
I appreciate that! I try not to be "those guys" lol!
Yes, Knowledge, more please.
Thanks for a fantastic presentation.
#TeamReplay for the win! #YTHF21
Thanks for checking it out! This one was packed full of great information.
I, by in large, have a better understanding of how to ground properly now, but there is much more info here than needed. The bulk of material here makes assumptions about standard knowledge regarding electrical circuits, ohms law, and differences between impedance and resistance. I don't believe that what most HAMs need are learning lessons, but more along the lines of an an episode from This Old House kind of format.
I would really like to see a follow up video that takes a real world approach of investigating an existing HAM shack, showing how to make some basic measurements, show the mistakes found, and how to implement the corrective actions. THAT would be much more effective and a video like that would harness you twice as many views and future subscribers in my opinion.
Most of us don't like lectures, although the information is appreciated by many like myself. Most people prefer the "field day" approach of realistic presentations with lots of terms like: "see, this is what I'm talking about" and followed with "and now lets fix this."
Great job AI5DH and thanks for the informative presentation!
My equipment chassis ground points are linked together and internally connected to the AC 3rd line ground. My ATU had has a ground connection lug that goes to my ground rod and not the AC grounds: I need to isolate AC from DC.
I have lived in this house for 31 years, built in 1930, brought to electrical code in 1993 when we bought the place. It is in a historic district with the power and phone lines lines on poles in the alley. I had a (small) lightening strike probably 25 years ago on the phone line - remember when we had landlines and dial up? It took out the phones and computers/modems, etc. Insurance paid for it back in those days. Not much you can do about the phone lines although the lines were properly installed. I now have fiber and have eliminated all the lines, except the power line, that comes from the alley. Maybe 15 or so years ago, my son and I were standing outside when another (small) lightening strike struck my 30 foot tower and yagi. Sparks fell on our head as we were standing under it. I physically disconnect my equipment when not in use from my antennas. None of my equipment was damaged but I took down the yagi and changed the coax and gamma match and all was OK. Fortunately, it did not damage my rotor. My tower is grounded by a large braid. That is it. I can't dig up my back yard and fill if full of radials for my little tower. We just to the best we can. That is pretty much all we can do. 73 WA4QGA
Cleared up a lot of misconceptions and questions. Thanks
Glad it helped!
It would be interesting to clearly demonstrate the problem on an Astron and make the modification on video ...
I agree and I'm looking into doing just that!
Superb presentation! Best on the topic I've ever seen or heard. Thank you so much on this critical topic.
I never hear it mentioned in these talks with relationship to Grounds and electrical noise !
That is, especially if you're utilities are above ground, but depending on proximity to power lines, it is common to have voltage induced into antennas from those power lines !
(Yes...,without direct connection !)
Which I can imagine translates into potential noise, if not worse in your receiver ?
So, if a piece of AC equipment has a 3 prong plug (3rd wire being ground from the main panel), we do not bond the chassis to out shack common ground bar?
OCD's are loving this.
I like the discussion at 20 minutes about the difference you should see between ground and neutral at the outlet with a load. If there's no difference, some character has probably tied the neutral and ground pins together to fool the outlet testers.
I listened to the entire presentation and came to this conclusion: I'm not going to override the knowledge of major companies like Astron and Icom, who don't put superfluous circuits in their equipment.
The idea about WHY major manufacturers tell us to fuse both negative and positive power cables on direct-to- battery mobile radio installations also makes sense to me. I'll do it exactly like the manufacturer recommends.
This is great, thanks for doing this. I appreciate him keeping it (relatively) simple for us non-EE types :-)
His audio dropped out, because it,
"Grounded Out " !
⚡😂🤣😂⚡
Wow I didn't know Freddy Mercury was into Ham radio? Aha ha aha ha.....
I have the Astron SS-30M-AP (mfg date 2022) before I open it up, I went ahead and emailed Astron about the bonding jumper between chassis and DC negative (also pointed out the possibility of chassis paint being in the way which could negate a chassis connection which I saw mentioned a lot online). One thing that I am a tad confused on, is if I need to run a ground connection to every device in my Ham Shack that is plugged into the same outlet and/or connected to radio gear? I have a 24" monitor attached to my Yaesu FTDX10 and separate SP30 speaker, there is an LDG EX-100 ATU controller, a Yaesu FTM200R, the Wires-X Yaesu HRI-200, the Astron SS30M-AP... And then because of Wires-X being attached to from the FTM200R and HRI-200 over to my laptop setup. Does that mean now potentially, I have to attach the chassis's of all my laptop setup into the same ground bar? (monitors, speakers, NAS, laptop, woofer, etc)
I had NO idea Radials were for lighting
Have 60 radials on my vertical and 4 ground rods around the vertical then coax underground to another ground rod that grounds the coax shield to the ground rod before it enters the house. I could not bring in my coax by my Electric Mains.
I need to connect the house power ground rod to my radio room ground rod outside the house. It’s like 55 feet away. I did run a wire in the basement that connects the 2 ground rods. I’ll have to change that. It wound be interesting to see that Astron mod.
Antenna radials make an excellent lightning ground if you use bare wire just beneath the surface. This is why all commercial AM radio towers use bare wire. Have no clue why hams use insulated wire. Uncle Elmer perhaps?
Thanks for sharing your setup. Yeah, a lot of good info was given in this presentation!
@Ham Radio TV: why do they bonded negative jumpers in the power supplies in the 1st place?
Seems to me the AC ground bond to chassis would be for safety, but good question about the DC ground bond. Maybe they were still thinking in terms of "safety" for the 13.8v DC? In case you stick your tongue on the PS case at the same time the positive filter capacitor faults to a short condition and your hand was on your ham radio chassis 😂
Awesome video @Ham Radio TV and thanks to Dereck for the wonderful information. All made sense 👍
Likely the component you see from positive to chassis on the DC side of your power supply is a voltage suppressor diode. This protects your radio if you get unregulated voltage above 12V across your power supply terminals... the diode will conduct to a dead short and your equipment will be protected. I fixed one of my power supplies where the regulator blew and my radio blew too.. I had about 20V across the radio. A TVS in there now protects future failures.
Thanks bro and thanks for the additional information about the diode!
I wish there was someone who provided a shack review service. The operators I know are not experts enough to correct my ground and RFI issues.
This presentation is not very understandable. There are four different types of ground: AC power, DC power, RF, and lightning. He only vaguely alludes to these different types of ground. The point is that there is no universal ground solution for ground without introducing undesired ground loops. So for example if you have a grounded vertical antenna you will have the kind of ground loop issues he discusses if you get hit by lightning since you will have two ground points. One for the antenna and one for the AC ground.
This is a very tricky subject and we tried to break it down as best we could. Perhaps we should make more videos in the future. Are homes and business have AC ground. DC only has the negative and positive. Our DC equipment cases/enclosures should be grounded to the main AC ground, but that is not called DC ground. "RF grounding" is a misnomer. A vertical antenna has RF radials, and in most cases are not stuck into the ground but just laying there or suspended. Lighting protection is then different and should still be connected with a 6 AWG or better back to your main AC ground. Dereck does touch on a way to use your RF radials as lighting protection radials but they need to be bare wire and buried. Big picture, we can enjoy this hobby so many ways and there is always more knowledge to learn.
Correct there are 4 Ground Systems. They all originate from a Single Point eliminating any loops inside the shack.
This was a fantastic video and finally helped understand grounding. I am curious what I should do with my FTdx5000 or any other radio with a built in PSU to unbond the chassis from electrical ground. Lots of food for thought in this video. 73 de N9LVG
Great Information. Thank You.
At 15:00+ is illustrated battery (-) going to ground, and load (-) going to ground, which may be, but lacks (-) wire to load, so a bit of false narrative about the current flow.
my head hurts now...
If I removed the acdc jumper in the lower supply does the power supply chassis need to be grounded. Is the chassis bonded tobac or dc
Great question.
NO! The Power Supply chassis already has a proper ground provided by the power cord and would only be redundant.
@@groundguru9287 the more I look into this the more confused I get. Ground rod at incoming ac to house is on south end power supply, radio, and tuner at north end of house. Ground rod just outside window from station. What needs to be grounded to the ground rod and do I need to connect the station ground rod to the house ground rod via wire and new rod every so many feet?
I plan on having a shed in my backyard to serve as my ham shack. I am going to pour a concrete slap with rebar grid to serve as a ufer ground. My home, on a slab, also uses this method as the soil is extremely rocky. I will be running a 50 amp circuit from my home service panel about 100 ft to a subpanel in the shack. I understand spg for the shack equipment which be be grounded to the ufer beneath the shed. The subpanel will be grounded back to the main service panel. I will have two 15 amp and one 20 amp circuit in tge shed. The 20 amp is for hear and ac, one 15 amp circuit for lights and other outlets. The other 15 amp circuit will be dedicated to the dc power supply. Is this enough to ensure I don't have a ground loop issue?
Live chat replay isn’t working.
Should be good now. It sometimes takes TH-cam a few days to render the video with chat.
Great Info. Thanks gents.
Grounding ? You don’t need no stinking grounding !
I experienced a really crazy occurrence. I unplugged the coax from a base transceiver and the transceiver lost power. It didn't make sense because the +12 and - were connected to the power supply. I discovered that the negative Anderson power pole conductor was not making contact with the Anderson power pole on the power supply. How did the coax provide a ground? Well I had this transceiver and a micro-node connected to a duplexer, and the micro-node was plugged in to a different power supply. Apparently the ground was obtained by a connection from the transceiver coax -> duplexer -> micro-node coax -> micro-node -> other power supply -> wall outlet -> first power supply -> transceiver. :o I have seen instances where the fuse on a negative power lead blows, but in this case it wouldn't have helped because there is no fuse in the odd ground path.
Geez, that is crazy and thanks for sharing!
The negative shouldn't have a fuse.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Every transceiver power cord I have has a fuse on both positive and negative leads. I can see it being useful if the negative battery lead gets disconnected from the vehicle chassis and then the transceiver antenna ground to battery becomes the ground connection for the vehicle... bad for the transceiver.
@@kd5you1
There are other grounds in a car and automotive lights and electronics don't usually have a negative fuse themselves.
So if they don't have fuses, why do it with a radio?
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Why other electronics in a car don't have fuse on the negative side I don't know. I've been reading up on it today though.
I have a dipole with ladder line coming down from attic, centrally located within house. Antenna not exposed to outside at all. Base of antenna ladder line is in basement where it's connected to the coax and closer to a copper water line that exits out of basement. Should I ground to that, or go further away to main power ground? I do not know if that water line is bonded back to main power ground. Please help!
14AWG is Only good 15amps not 20amps.. FIRE Hazerd ! Protect the Wire !
However, it is neither uncommon, nor against code, to have a string of 15 amp outlets on a feed with a 20 amp fuse in the distribution panel. There are at least two such circuits required by the NEC - the two 20A small appliance circuits in the kitchen.
In the UK, it is even more extreme. If I recall correctly, their circuits are all ring - e.g. both ends of the circuit are attached to the circuit breaker and the circuits are often 30 amp. They have small fuses in the plugs to protect the device wiring.
WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!!!!!
O YES!
Thanks!
I have a 40 meter ( 7.0 MHz)ground mounted, vertical antenna attached to ladder Line to the house. From the house there is coax from the balun to the radio position. The 9:1 Balun is a DC short, internally, via the internal copper over the Ferrite windings..
One side of the ladder line goes to the antenna the other goes to ground radials. Everything is DC grounded to earth vial the ground radials.
What is the proper grounding scheme with all element being grounded to earth via the radials and floating DC power to the radio?
Antenna radials are different than electrical grounding. Your radio and coax shield should be grounded via a bus or 6 awg wire to you houses service panels ground rod.
Wow! I've only been licensed 3 months and I've tried to understand grounding and bonding. I've read the grounding and bonding book and watched a half- dozen youtube videos by different experts. The one definite takeaway point is that I'm going to have to get 160' of #6AWG bare copper wire and run it around the house, across 6' of concrete to bond the ground rod outside my shack to the AC service ground. I'll work from there and do my best. All I can say at this point is that I've never been shocked (stimulated, as some old hams say) by my equipment, and I'm not aware of excessive noise, not that I would necessarily recognize it. (I WAS able to complete the 13 Colonies event last weekend, though, my initial foray into HF).
Tim
KI5OUN
160 foot of #6 VIOLATES ELECTRICAL CODE.
That is NOT bonding ground rods.
The rods cannot be more than 8 feet apart under Code
OMG
From radio to ground. If that is not enough, too bad.
A lot of things will work but not all are safe. This hobby is all about learning, experimenting and improving. Bottom line is to have fun and help one another.
I had asked this during the Livestream but never received an answer. At the @51:00 mark, he talks about daisy-chaining the outlets in your home creating noise. What happens if you run them in parallel instead of daisy-chaining? (For non-electricians, you do this by hooking each receptacle to the branch circuit through pigtails instead of running the circuit on one side and out the other side of the receptacle). Would this help with the line noise from other devices on the circuit and potentially eliminate the need for a dedicated circuit?
Terminology sometimes makes things more confusing. The way "daisy-chaining" was used here was to described how one 15 amp circuit continues through your house, one outlet after another. All you're house hold circuits are installed with parallel wiring, other wise after each outlet you would have voltage drop. What he was talking about is your average electronic devices have line noise filters that are for the device it's self. The manufactures do it cheaply and intentionally drop the "filtering" right on the green ground wire. This then has to travel back to the electrical panel that could be a good distance away. If you then plug your radio/power supply into this same circuit you could pick up additional noise.
Hello Patrick that is what a dedicated circuit is. I cannot add a picture but should be able to describe well enough. Think of taking a 12-Volt car battery, and connecting two long wires to the battery. One for Positive and one for Negative. Along the way we tap a radio (device) along the length of the wire for power. Example we connect 3 radios, one close to the battery, another about half way down the length, and the third one at the very end of the wire run. That is a DAISY-CHAIN circuit. Better solution is to run a dedicated circuit for each radio, or three dedicated circuits, one for each radio or Wall Receptacle.
Patrick, I am a licensed electrician and what I do is run one "feed" wire rated for the breaker I am using to a junction box in a location in the attic. Then I run four wires feeding from that junction box down to each outlet or light fixture location. It can be up to four items with each having wire capable handling the current rating of the breaker. Each branch of the circuit from the feed wire is parallel to each other. No daisey chaining...
I feel like I asked this guy what time it was and he told me how to build an atomic clock. Not helpful.
I get radio ga ga
Freddy Mercury???
This would be so much easier to follow without the animated popup banners, the reaction shots, and the slide-blocking zooms.
Is the pdf available?
That was a power point and not available. He does have a full right up here, that covers it: www.repeater-builder.com/tech-info/bonding/amateur-radio-bonding.html
Rf ground plane to spg
Is this a question or statement?
Statement
I thought Freddie Mercury was dead ?
POOR presentation.
I tried. I really was hoping I could learn something. But I could only catch about 60% to 70% of what this guy is trying to say. Just unintelligible. Very disappointed ☹️.
Nothing bad with audio here. Perhaps you are not used to his accent. Very useful presentation.
can't believe I missed this video 2 years ago great video and is one of the greatest explanations I've heard have a good one de W9US