Radio Mast Earthing

General practices have the tower or mast grounded and the lightening rod should provide a 45 deg cone of protectection. Depending on the height of the tower or mast it may cover the trans mission building. There are also requirements to ground the coax or waveguide at each transition directly to ground. This provides protection for the transmission gear.

Your mast will probably take a hit in a storm, therefore you must provide multiple paths to the grounding grid. Grounding conductors are usually solid copper that are exothermically welded to the tower structure. These grounding conductors must not be bent to conform around say a corner, but must be kept in a smooth series of long radius arcs to allow the discharge an easy path to ground. All metal fencing is grounded to a solid copper wire that is placed in a ditch beneath the fence and ground rods are driven at the corners and usually half way between the corners. All connections are exothermically welded together. Around your equipment building is usually another ground loop, where ground rods are also driven to help in the discharge and then this loop is connected via trench to the fence loop. Inside the equipment building around the ceiling is the Halo Loop, which is connected via ground conductors down at each corner to the ground loop around the outside. Any metal within the upper part of the equipment building, that is cable trays, supports, etc. must be bonded to the grid.

Hello,

With regard to you query; A ground pit has to be established first which would serve as a common ground for both tower/mast and the radio room. This pit should be six feet deep and contain a mixture of carbon/coal and salt. With this base complete, a thick copper plate should then be placed at the bottom of this pit. From there, another copper rod which is fixed/attached to the plate should become the main ground bed. Thereafter, a heavy stranded cable should be extended out of this pit with the rod to serve as a common ground for both.