I’ve ordered the hexbeam and rotor. I already received the rotor cable so I figured I’d get that prepped now, the rest of the stuff should be here Monday. I’m hoping to have it setup next week to use in the Florida QSO Party. In an effort to keep lightning out of the house I’ve added a terminal block with MOV’s in the single point ground panel outside. There’s commercial product for this but this setup does the same thing. If the voltage goes above 82v then the MOV takes over and the current goes to the ground panel. Hopefully I don’t have to find out if it works. We get a lot of lightning here so I’ve followed all the precautions in the Ground and Bonding book.
To review, the coax comes to the single point ground panel and connects to lightning arrestors. These use a gas discharge tube that contains a gas between two electrodes, if enough voltage passes through the gas for a long enough time it will start conducting and go to ground. The ground panel also connects inside to an Alpha Delta coax switch which has it’s own gas discharge tube and that ground is then bonded to a ground bus on the desk that the radio gear is connected to. The copper strap connects to a ground rod just below the panel and that ground rod is then bonded to the service entrance ground on the other side of the house via #6 solid copper wire. In my reading this seems to be the most important part, connecting all the ground together so you don’t have a differential between grounds in the event of a strike.
