Thanks Peter, I have been fretting over this very issue.

Thank you Peter. So many useful bits of advice. Like politics many people have entrenched views about earthing your shack. You will have got many thinking. Next one on RF earthing could you talk about the “artificial earth” Tnx Dave G4NOW Greenwich

Good stuff peter. More rot gets talked about "earth" than pretty much any other subject in amateur radio. Nice to hear some clarity

Great work

Well stated, as always, Mr. Waters! Thank you. AC5MF

I had a most unfortunate situation with a nearby lightning strike. My house is protected with lightning rods, but lightning struck somewhere very close by the building. The energy entered the neutral side of my house mains. The high voltage passed through an Astron power supply and melted the insulation on the transformer. The voltage then exited through the negative terminal of the Astron and went through the power cable to my Yaesu FTDX 3000. The 25 amp fuse on that negative line blew, but also the actual fuse holder melted. The voltage exited through the Yaesu, I don't know where exactly, but the radio ceased to function. Sent the radio in for repair, but every circuit card was bad - beyond economic repair. No voltage entered through the positive power feed nor through the antenna which I had neglected to disconnect. So now my procedure is to unplug the power supply and disconnect the antenna coax. This same lightning strike destroyed a second power supply and a APRS station in an entirely different location in my house - same scenario, the negative power lead directed energy to a 2 meter radio and TNC. The energy destroyed a computer monitor in yet a third location in my house. All in all a very expensive event. I would have had to had all this equipment unplugged from the mains to prevent this. 73, Mark Julicher WX3O PS, I really liked that FTDX 3000, but am consoling myself with an 899a.

Very informative and timely video - at least for me - since I'm installing a new EFHW antenna for 40m through 10m here at my QTH. I also saw the ARRL video presentation of K6WX and I think your video helps clarify things even better. Thanks a bunnch Peter! David, K7KDE

This has been one of your best videos to date, you have opened a can of worms though, after all if you get a transceiver, that is connected to a tuner and a linear and a SWR meter, then all the outer wire of the coax is basically earthing out each of the units, add earthing of all of 5he units as well and you can get earth loops which can be pretty deadly, AntenneX has published articles on this a lot, An Artificial Ground like the one that MFJ used to make is perfect for sorting out bad earths in the shack. Thanks Peter.

wow thank you Peter ive listened to the lecture, shocker pun pun, once again thank you

Great video Peter! the mysterious and elusive "earth", took me years to get my head around it and restrict my efforts to things that were actually do-able! One aspect you only tangentially touched on, bonding equipment together. It made me think about those rigs that are 12V powered. Whether intended for vehicular or base operation, you can not assume the negative lead is connected to chassis and so you dont know for certain about its earthed status. Similarly, the power supplies for 12V rigs, again you cant assume the negative output is chassis or earthed. What anyone needs to do about these rigs and PSUs will be different depending on whether you are addressing RF grounding or power safety earthing. 73 de G0AFV

What I hear regularly is "I have high receive noise, a good earth will cure it". Yet, I have never seen any evidence for that. Most noise seems to be picked up by the aerial system. Earthing seems to have become a bit of a superstition. It's different in the southern USA where you need lightning protection.

21:23 Customer calls to order a bit of wire.

Thanks for doing this video. I was the one that requested it. It's such a confusing subject, not helping by most of the information being US based. I really appreciate you trying to clear things up.

Good job

I watched the full ARRL lecture on this when it was released. Very interesting.

I did just what you said years ago when I was working on my General and CW (when the US license required 13 wpm). My shack was on the 2nd floor. I had ran a ground wire up from a ground rod but still wasn't enough. I would get a rf shock off the key. Boy did that bite hurt! I put quarter wave lengths of wire off the ground lug of my MFJ manual tuner and ran them under the baseboard around the shack. Did the trick. No more "shocks"! Robert KD4YDC

TY Peter. im oldschool having all DC grounds down to 3 copper ground rods.. you dont mentiom dc grounding just RF and AC but ive understood your input,, ill leave my dc gnd in place becausemits very low noise since i fitted it..but ive learnt so much of RF earthing. cheers n ty for the heads up

Thank you Peter…I also viewed the k6 video. I experimented yesterday using an antenna analyzer (RigExpert Stick 500) on 40 and 20 meters just to verify if SWR, resistance or reactance changed with the station ground attached vs unattached. All remained constant…i.e. the station ground (8 ft copper rod with a seven foot #6 gauge wire) didn’t affect my station on those two bands…just had to prove it to myself👍

Peter, this is excellent! I know many extra class hams (and a few engineers) who do not understand this concept, so thank you for discussing it. It is vital to understand as it is part of the very foundation of current flow in any circuit. Keep up the great work. 73 OM

Hello Peter - another really great and informative video. In Pat Hawkers book, Amateur Radio Techniques on page 296 there is a writeup on the Long Wire and the use of ¼ wave radials etc. My Shack is also upstairs and like you I don't have any RF Ground system and thank fully no RF issues. Great video Peter - 73 de Ger

Always unplug every device going to the radio and accessories when there is a storm around. It pays to take no chances.

Great presentation. We rarely think of way ground wire in terms of wavelength and we should. Never thought of the 1/4 wave wire trick for RF in the shack. I wonder if that would help with other devices being effected by RF on wires like alarm systems and garage door openers. Might be worth an experiment. Here in the states, the National Electrical Code Requires any ground rod to be bonded to the rod at the point the electrical service enters the building. In the Motorola Standards and Guidelines for Communication Sites (R56) also requires the same bonding. Nothing in either mention RF as a reason. Here in the U.S. we use 60 Hertz for power and 1/4 wavelength (using the standard antenna formula) would be 776.5 miles long (!!) so the chance of of having a 1/4 wavelength ground wire for our AC power anywhere is pretty remote. But as you and K6WX state, at the upper frequencies we use, a 1/4 wave ground wire is not uncommon and with 10 meters and up, multiple 1/4 wavelengths may likely occur. And as lightning acts as a high frequency signal (essentially a pulse of energy with a very fast rise time, short duration and fast decay) it too may see our ground wire as a 1/4 wave (or odd multiple of) wire which could look like a high impedance and find a lower impedance path through our equipment.

Great advice Peter! My shack is on the second floor of my home with wire antennas

If only this come out last week when I was bannging a big copper spike into the garden and stripping the plastic off a roll of copper wire brading it to protect my new FT 991 A ? God I love this hobby :)

I love the Magnetic Loop antenas' above ground potential :P ....and as for grounding on a multi-floor building... just build an artificial ground (just as MFJ-931 or MFJ-9231 "used to" make).

As an audio comms engineer pre retirement Earth Loop ie multiple earth paths were a major issue. What was pushed at me when I started rf on retirement was allabout earthing so I did my ground rods and linking equpt. Following the dangers of remote earth on PMS Mains I have gone back to basics and only use earth for mains safety. Thanks for formalising this.

Your suggestion of putting a length of wire connected to your ground terminal (your 20m example) - just pondering perhaps tuning that wire....

Good sensible information… as usual..

AFAIK shack rods (if exist) in ground should be connected together and here even connected to AC ground system (but all these connections done in ground) to have the same voltage potential everywhere (in case of storm for example). Lightning protection system requiring (even more) grounding. Power supplies can have floating output - which means connected equipment won't be AC grounded. Which also means device chassis won't be connected together. These things can be very complicated.

Great video Peter, this is a subject I’ve looked for many times on KZfaq and never really found what I’ve been looking for, until now. Thanks very much for the time and effort you put into these videos. Andy…

Brilliant and informative vid. Quick question on radials… i have a dx commander and buried my radials, my about 4 inchs. Does burying radials have a negative impact on performance?

Thanks Peter, this is all great information, well explained in concise language, I don't think there is much more to note on the subject for most of us, we can put it to rest.

Well Peter...... I'm a new ham having passed my foundation end of may, and firstly I'd like to thank you for all the videos you have made and I hope you make many more. This one has left me totally bewildered. While I know that if you ask 100 hams something you may get 100 different opinions, this one has me. In my own case, having a 2nd floor shack, I decided to ground to an earth rod using rg58 with a capacitor on the far end as per one method I found. I haven't found any increased noise level. So now we have... No need to ground at all.... Dont use a long wire to earth as it acts as an antenna.... use a quarter wave as an earth along the floor (doesn't this act as an antenna?) make sure you bind your equipment together... don't bind your equipment together... I dont know whether to leave it as is, rip it out or what. Heaven help us all. (posted with appreciation as I do value your contributions) 73

I have found this rather interesting since this was to be tomorrow's project! But I still have a question, my glass fibre Moonraker vertical multiband is on a pole mounted to my garage, what are your recommendations?

thanks for the video , i guess the days of TVI are long gone

Only thing a ground helps me with is when I listen to aircraft NDB transmitters....down below the MW.....I get a lot of crackle.....I wire for my IC-7300 ground wing nut to my house hearting rad gets rid id that crackle. Interesting video Peter....in the set up page for an old Yaesu radio I had.....it recommended NOT to daisy chain component's together

XIEGU G90 ground wired to power supply ground which is house ac ground. Couldn't hear anyone without it. Also sunk an 8' copper ground for the static/ lightening arrester attached at the 9:1 unun via 9' #6 copper. See anything wrong with this ? KJ5GUN '73

Great video. I spent months after passing my foundation trying to figure out grounding my station. Hope new radio users find this video before they end up going down the rabbit hole.

Peter, thank you for all of your hard work. I love your “lessons”. Bob VE4RMC

Peter, good video. There seems to be a big discussion about earthing and PME systems? What about being connected to PME mains system and installing a vertical antenna that has radials in the earth?

To stop rf in the shack you deal with it at the antenna not within your shack Bonding equipment to a common shack busbar is essential to ensure all equipment is at the same potential Rsgb has good information on this

An artificial ground can help too

Earthing and grounding....sounds like a comedy duo lol

Lightning is a concern for me. I intend to put a 2” copper pipe 6 meters below the ground into the water table, copper strap from the pipe to the point the coax enters the shack, with a surge protector. I’ll use the surge protector as a point to disconnect the coax between there and the radio, when not in use. Perhaps I should also disconnect the “ground” at the radio when not in use as well.

When I was nine and building crystal sets I tried using a big plant pot full of mud from the garden as a portable earth. Sadly it didn't work.

Very interesting,

The "ground is a myth" thing is goofy. Allowing your equipment to survive an enormous change in ground potential is quite important.

Should the common mode choke be nearest the antenna or the equipment? Can I put one on each end? Any benifit to this? Thanks

Ham for 55 years, never grounded anything

A deceptively complex subject when you consider the safety, RF and to some extent lightning protection. I had one time did have bonding between various pieces of equipment but suspect it was largely a waste of time and certainly a nuisance if you are forever changing things. With the popular TNC-S wiring we use in the UK an antenna with a "ground" presents other problems.