Ham Station Sheet Metal Ground Plane

You can bond equipment together at rf by connecting each piece of gear to a copper strap or pipe with a short piece of strap or wire.

Ham station sheet metal ground plane. 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. 4 equipment has a design defect. Why or when is a ham station ground necessary. 5 we have poorly installed connectors or defective cables.

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. Sometimes we set ourselves up for problems without knowing it. It is possible to simulate this function by replacing the real earth. As the name indicates the antenna ground plane acts as a simulated ground.

That s only 05 wavelengths at 30 mhz which is a tiny ground plane. Then connect the bonding strap or pipe to your ac safety ground rod with a heavy wire. Dx engineering radio rf ground plane kits provide an effective method of reducing stray rf pickup by equipment and interconnecting cables. Copper strap is sold at hardware and roofing stores as flashing.

Antennas requiring ground planes are called ground plane dependent and having an appropriate ground plane can greatly affect performance. Ham gear usually has a ground terminal just for this purpose. Each time a ground loop is created a small inductive coil is formed the ground wire completes the loop. Both of these should result in some level of electrical isolation between the antenna feed shield and the sheet metal.

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. Ideally you d have a ground plane of around 1 4 wavelength in radius which a pizza sheet can provide on vhf uhf bands but isn t even close on the hf bands. A dependent antenna can become effectively useless without one. K7trf aug 19 2016.

A very large pizza sheet might be around a meter in diameter or iow 50cm in radius. 3 the problem is not rf at all but is a dc power supply ground loop back into the audio system.