[time-nuts] Lightning and grounds...

Burt I. Weiner biwa at att.net
Sun Oct 4 21:49:26 UTC 2009


Something I should've mentioned is that the connections are all 
essentially in series.  For example.  If you have a wire going to a 
ground rod and you connect several devices to it, they are all 
meeting at the top of a "resistor".  If a device attaches part way 
down a wire or you have a wire running along the back of a bench and 
the various pieces of equipment attach somewhere along he main ground 
wire, this is like a tapped resistor.  Each piece of equipment is 
connected a some point along the resistor.

Ground plates are usually insulated from walls, inside or out because 
the wall can become part of the path.  Lightning is tricky stuff and 
the only rule it follows is that of finding the quickest and most 
direct path to ground.  However, that doesn't mean that it won't take 
many paths.  Make it convenient for it to follow the least damaging path.

Again,

Burt, K6OQK

At 12:44 PM 10/4/2009, time-nuts-request at febo.com wrote
>One of the ways that I've always explained this is to draw a
>schematic, actually more of a pictorial of the ground system and each
>piece of equipment in the overall system as a block.  In place of the
>wires to ground, I draw a resistor symbol, including the ground and
>ground lead itself.  In fact, each chassis or cabinet is also one of
>the resistors.  By looking at it this way you can see that the ground
>system path is nothing more than a low resistance voltage divider,
>actually a current divider between a strike and the good earth.

Burt I. Weiner Associates
Broadcast Technical Services
Glendale, California  U.S.A.
biwa at att.net
K6OQK 






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