As probably every Ham, I also dreamt about a nice mast with an antenna system. For a long time I was considering what mast to get and where to put it to get the best results. XYL had no objections. When I finally decided to install a 10 m long pneumatic mast in the attic of the garage (so that the…

More ▼

Once I successfully finished putting up the mast I had to think about the cable route between the mast and the hamshack. I looked up some information on the internet that described a set up similar to mine. I was especially concerned with how to ground the whole thing properly so as to avoid ground loops and other issues.

The mast itself is grounded with the help of foundation grounding of the garage. When building the garage I took advantage of the situation and made this grounding accessible while digging the baseplate for the antenna mast. Hamshack is grounded with its own grounding pins, which I hammered in the ground in the hamshack cellar which doesn’t have flooring and is actually just a pit beneath the room. Because of that I had to solve how to prevent a possible electrical potential between the two grounding points and how to avoid to balancing it through use of shielded coaxial cable. In the hamshack the shielded cable is connected to the grounding via transreciever circuit; for the mast I will ground the shielded cable to the garage grounding through lightning arrester and antenna switch. I will then connect these two grounding points so that they share the same potential.

I took the advantage of the fact that the trench for the wiring will be done by excavator and had it made the trench 1m deep although XYL was not happy about that.

The trench was approximately 35 m long. I hammered in five grounding poles in there, each 1.5 m long. This was an extremely hard work as my land lies on the former riverbed of a local stream and subsoil is very rocky.

Once in the ground the grounding poles are connected by the grounding belt using the standard clamps and this belt is taken out on the both ends of the ditch. On the mast side it will be connected to the already existing grounding thus expanding its area and on the hamshack side it will create a grounding point replacing the existing poles under the hamshack.

After the connecting belt was in place I covered 3/4 of the ditch. Now I will put the cable duct with all the cables before covering it all up. I will describe this in one of the following entries.

Less ▲

The weather throughout the week was good so I prepared everything to put down the wiring. I had to attach a grounding box to the outside wall of the hamshack. This will contain grounding for all the cables before they enter the hamshack. I will also put the lightning arrester for the coaxial cable…

More ▼

During the repair of the TRX210 Sněžka transceiver, which was entrusted to me by Luďek OK2KZ, I worked up a sweat diagnosing and repairing interesting fault. Since I could not find any mention of a similar problem on the Internet, I decided to write my anabasis on my blog. I've only noticed sighs…

More ▼