Ham Radio → Re: Grounds in the ground....

Don't care what the Army said who knows how long ago.. To prevent lightning damage there can be only 1 ground. To not do so (especially if they are separated by a distance) is to invite magic smoke releases.

The RF ground absolutely needs to be bonded (bonded means tied very solidly together through an adequately sized conductor) to the power ground. The RF ground and power ground are often 2 different systems, primarily because a protection ground doesn't make a good RF ground, nor does a RF ground make a good protection ground, but they should be bonded to make a complete system.

PS note I'm a broadcast engineer in Florida, I get ample opportunities to verify lightning system protection, on towers ranging up to 1300'.

There are specific cases where you don't ground certain RF equipment... It's designed to be floating, and great care has to be taken to maintain that isolation... I've got a couple of old analog radio locations (for telcom use) that are still setup that way.

That said, those are very SPECIFIC situations... Generally you want everything bonded. You can, and often should have multiple ground points, but they must be combined into a common plane, as well...

Grounding vs grounded vs bonding can become very confusing, very quickly...

This subject is wide open. Used to work in Broadcasting. My rule of thumb was that you could never have too much grounding. A heavy ground cable is good. How about two? There is the Neutral, and Case ground. They are the same, right? When these get reversed it can cause problems. It took me Weeks to find some problems. I would try to put in as many paths to ground, try not to make one of these YOU.