Yes, Both lewis and your self have proven the point about the joints on
towers should not count on. The Air Terminals are at best to help break
up the energy that gets built up on the edges and peaks of the metal
structure and have been proven. I have done both where we do a down
runner from the Air terminals and just bonded to the tower itself.
Either works well depending on how well the tower itself is grounded or
how well the down runner is grounded.
I do however have a site that doesnt get grounded at all and none of
the equipment does either due to the large amounts of Quartz Crystal or
Vermiculite. A ground system at this site would be more than the site is
worth so no ground is better option this site. So far so good.
Just a 2cent drop in the bucket when building sites over 200' please do
the earth and ground study to ensure a good ground.
On 05/10/2017 08:38 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Yeah, never trust anything to be a ground except for a ground wire ran
to your single point ground.
I have even seen electrical conduit get hot enough to shock you due to
poor connectors.
*From:* George Skorup
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 9, 2017 8:13 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Grounding to tower
We've done it both ways, and I'm not going to tell you that it's 100%
one way or the other. But based on experience, where we've lost gear
from the steel bonding method, we went back and ran a bonding wire up
and tied all of our gear to it and losses went down quite a lot.
But I would also agree with Jaime. An air terminal at the top above
everything is the best option for direct strikes.
Utility power is the single worst problem at most of our sites. DC.
DC. DC. Surge suppressors. Surge suppressors. Surge suppressors. Oh,
and the single point bonding principle.
On 5/9/2017 4:53 PM, Jason McKemie wrote:
That's not really possible in this case. What do you think about
bonding equipment to the tower vs a separate ground wire? I
certainly don't want to make the equipment more of a target.
On Tue, May 9, 2017 at 4:29 PM, Jaime Solorza
<[email protected]> wrote:
I am a firm believer in putting lightning rod at highest point of
tower with direct cable run to buried ring or rod next to it.
Has worked well in our area.
On May 9, 2017 3:25 PM, "Jason McKemie"
<[email protected]> wrote:
Wanted to get some opinions on grounding equipment at a tower
site (on the tower). The tower and shelter are all properly
grounded, it's a solid-steel leg tower. Right now I'm
grounded via clamps to the tower. My question is would it be
better/worse/the same to run a copper ground cable up to the
equipment? It's going to end up being bonded to the same
ground at the base, so I was thinking it wouldn't make a huge
difference but wanted to see what others' experience was with
this.
TIA
-Jason
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