how important is a ground rod.

[billsjca]

just put my ole sigma4 back up. 20ft telospic mast, mounted on the ground roof would have been higher but ground mount allowed to use the eves to help. mast was set on top of a 2ft rod. to locate the base. next to the nast a 8ft ground rod was pounded and clamped to the mastfor a clean and positive ground. saw 12ft ground rods, but thought 8ft was good enough. compared to my old setup the groundrod is the main difference. before was roof mounted and 20 miles away at my mom's house. same antenna but noticing much better sucess at working skip. don't get much lighting here, so that is not a big worry. need to search my arrl hand book... well this is my first post. so far the ground rod gets 2 thumbs up.
Bill in San jose ca.

 

[Marconi]

Welcome Bill.

Skip is just starting to return after some years being on the low side of the 11 year cycle. I think we all have been experiencing better DX signals for the last few months, plus it is also sort of typical with summer on the way.

Your Sigma 4 is a great antenna and you should see improving contacts as time goes on with the new cycle fast approaching.

Grounding is always a good idea for safety reasons for sure and I don't like roof mounts, because of the damage they can cause, expensive repairs even if Mother Nature decides not to come calling with a bang and bright lights.

Good luck,

 

[billsjca]

good points. I got out in the early 90's and skip was annoying, now I just work sideband. both might be greater factors then the ground rod. wasn't in a hurry to put an antenna on the roof. easier to tune and work on the antenna when it's on a telescopic mast. and easier to get a clean install. sigma 4 works great local. might add some mast if i feel I need to. recall a relationship with antenna height and signal propagation right now it's a half wavelength high. might go for a full wave length. some time. if skip gets stronger might need to go higher to talk local.can use all the help I can legally get

 

[W5LZ]

A single ground rod is of very little importance, it just does not provide much of a ground for safety, or RF purposes.
- 'Doc

 

[BOOTY MONSTER]

i dont use ground rods or ground wires (its best to use the mast rather than a ground wire since it will pass much more power) and i also isolate/insulate my antenna from its mast so theres no chance of it radiating . i also use a coax choke at the antennas feed point to keep it free of common mode currents that can make it radiate . from what i understand all this makes my antenna the only thing tx'ing and rx'ing . grounded or not if it takes a lightning strike the antenna and anything connected to it is fried so im careful to disconnect my coax in the house at the first sign of a storm or if im gonna be away and a storm is forecast .

some folks do have static noise reduction when adding earth ground to their antenna , but my grant and washington are very noise free with great ears , my newer 78ltw is very noisy compared to them sometimes .

so all that has worked for me , but each install is different .