Electrical Q re Earthing.

I have a lot of radio gear that is all 2 wire, no earth connection, other than the extensive and totally separate earthing system that is for the radio gear.

Should I bond this to the mains earth peg, which is just a single stake.Or should I really use a 1:1 isolating transformer and keep all my radio gear separate from the mains earth.

My main concern is obviously safety, but the introduction of or reduction of electrical noise is also a concern.Thanks

You cannot have a 2 bonds from a single main earth stake. (well you can , but not meant too)

Why dont you drive a stake yourself and use that!

Father in law is a retired radio engineer, gave him a hand setting up his gear, hammered in a separate driven earth.

You need to live on the edge man, flag earthing!

My thoughts .

UPS, "uninterpretable power supply"

Depending on location of each bit of radio gear that needs protecting, you could run all the power plugs to a single/several multi boards & run that in to a UPS box.
THAT, will give you a good static & earth isolation point as well as short duration back up power.

Thanks for the non flat replies.

Total power consumption at any one time could be up 3kw, so a UPS is out.

I do have a separate earth stake, several of them for the radio gear, but should I bond that to the mains earth or stay isolated.

If they are in the ground and you have relatively low resistive earth(dirt) then they are by nature already bonded.

Stay isolated.

By bonding them you run the risk of fault current from neighboring properties using your radio earth to track back to the neutral point of the house installation. I am not sure of how the radio stuff works but I am guessing that would not help the signal much.

Very goodpoint, not so good at the moment its bone dry with the drought

Telco sites with electronic, computer and RF equipment usually have a "technical earth". This technical earth is usually a chunk of copper bar from which earth feeds go to equipment. The bar is tied to building /mains earth with humungous cable.

So. Have a decent earth bar. In an amatuer radio shack this could be a 12 inch piece of 25x4mm copper bar, or even a brass strip with screws commonly sold at electrical suppliers. Use this as the source to earth all of your RF and electronic equipment. Tie this earth bar to earth with a good sized conductor (size depends on how far your earth bar is from the earth you are tying it to).

Given normal earth conditions, you could tie your earth bar to a decent earth stake and, as has been mentioned, this will be fine. Sometimes in places with volcanic history where there is a high pumice content in the soil, earth is not earth (electrically speaking), and you may choose to use a good deep earth stake close to the earth bar and additionally tie it to another earth stake or to your house earth stake as well.

Once you have your technical earth bar properly earthed, use it to provide earth to all of your equipment in a "star" configuration i.e. feed every device from the bar. Do not be tempted to serial feed one device from another (sets the scene for bad earths and potential earth loops).

Know that if some of your equipment is 3 pin i.e. directly attached to your house mains earth and you then earth the chassis (many RF devices have separate chassis earth attachment points) to your earth system then there is good potential for an earth loop and current could flow through this earth connection because the earth potentials of house earth and your technical earth might be different (which is one good reason to bond your "technical" earth to the house mains earth - or the garage earth, wherever your radio shack is).

mark-gThanks for the info, that is exactly the scene.I am going to put one piece of copper pipe along the edge of the desk and use short jumpers to connect to there from each piece of gear.That pipe will be taken down to good term technical earth with braid.Will run a doubled up length of yellow/green earthing wire from tech e to mains e, and bond them together.

Now all I need to do is get rid of the noise that comes from the PC's video card on 18Mhz and life will be sweet.Thanks

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