Grounds can serve three purposes: lightning protection, power line safety, or RF ground. These are three very different things, requiring very different ground methods.
For an RF ground, forget about a wire to earth ground. It will almost always be too long to present a low impedance at RF. Even if you can tune out the reactance by adjusting the length to a multiple of 1/2 wavelength or by using a tuner, it will still have RF current flowing in it and so will still radiate RF. A better method is to use a counterpoise wire. This is like a single radial, 1/4 wavelength long, connected to the chassis of the antenna tuner. One counterpoise is needed for each band of interest. Al N1AL _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
