Ham Station Sheet Metal Ground Plane

Why or when is a ham station ground necessary.

Ham station sheet metal ground plane. Shallow buried radial wires are the best. Each time a ground loop is created a small inductive coil is formed the ground wire completes the loop. I guess what i m simply not clear on is how a mag mount antenna s ground plane is connected electrically. The ground stake at the base of my inverted l antenna provides a place for the antenna current to flow at a true ground potential relative to the antenna potential.

It is found that for a monopole antenna like a quarter wavelength vertical the ground acts as a plane to reflect the radio waves so that an image of the top half of the antenna is seen in the earth. It is possible to simulate this function by replacing the real earth. Antennas requiring ground planes are called ground plane dependent and having an appropriate ground plane can greatly affect performance. A cookie or pizza sheet works fine as a ground plane for a 70cm or even 2m vertical but it s a very small ground plane on 10m or lower bands.

4 equipment has a design defect. The ground stake near the house provides a place for the common mode noise current to go far from the antenna where it cannot couple significantly. A very large pizza sheet might be around a meter in diameter or iow 50cm in radius. That s only 05 wavelengths at 30 mhz which is a tiny ground plane.

Both of these should result in some level of electrical isolation between the antenna feed shield and the sheet metal. I live in an apartment and i highly doubt i can do this. These are for the rf ground described above. Used under and in back of equipment this 1 16 inch thick pre drilled copper sheet creates an rf reference plane that is typically connected to the existing grounding bus.

Connection to other conductors just under the surface like a metal water pipe is next. 5 we have poorly installed connectors or defective cables. The individual station equipments already have their own ground reference but when they are interconnected grounding each equipment to the main ground bus as shown in fig 1 creates ground loops. As the name indicates the antenna ground plane acts as a simulated ground.

3 the problem is not rf at all but is a dc power supply ground loop back into the audio system. Consider also that most cars have a coat of paint between the mag mount and the sheet metal. What are the ground counterpoise alternatives to driving an 8 foot metal pole into the ground. A dependent antenna can become effectively useless without one.