Hi all,
I've finally purchased my first HF rig but due to conflicting advice on my ground I still haven't worked up the courage to power it up :-(
Due to space limitations I've installed a 20m long wire in my attic (above 2nd floor) connected to a 9:1 UnUn to bring the high impedance long wire down to about 50ohm to match the unbalanced coaxial input.
I'm then running 10metres of Mini RG8 Coax down to the ground floor to my HF Transceiver (internal tuner). The Receiver and Power Supply are grounded to a ground rod by 2 metres of copper braid.
But... I have no ground on the UnUn. The instructions say a ground is not mandatory and the local radio store advised not grounding the UnUn/long wire as it will cause a ground loop with my equipment. As long as the receiver is grounded that's all I need?
Andy advice would be much appreciated as I don't want to fry my rig which took me a lot of time to save up for. I appreciate that only having an internal Tuner will mean I can't operate on all the bands but money is an issue.
Many thanks for any advice.
Cheers,
Tony
I've finally purchased my first HF rig but due to conflicting advice on my ground I still haven't worked up the courage to power it up :-(
Due to space limitations I've installed a 20m long wire in my attic (above 2nd floor) connected to a 9:1 UnUn to bring the high impedance long wire down to about 50ohm to match the unbalanced coaxial input.
I'm then running 10metres of Mini RG8 Coax down to the ground floor to my HF Transceiver (internal tuner). The Receiver and Power Supply are grounded to a ground rod by 2 metres of copper braid.
But... I have no ground on the UnUn. The instructions say a ground is not mandatory and the local radio store advised not grounding the UnUn/long wire as it will cause a ground loop with my equipment. As long as the receiver is grounded that's all I need?
Andy advice would be much appreciated as I don't want to fry my rig which took me a lot of time to save up for. I appreciate that only having an internal Tuner will mean I can't operate on all the bands but money is an issue.
Many thanks for any advice.
Cheers,
Tony