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The month of December was a wild ride for me! I was in Colorado for the 2 weeks before Christmas, training a new team of folx how to use the processes/systems that I've been working on for the last 18 months. It was rough on the YL, having the kiddos on her own that long, but I'll be working from my basement office/shack for the next several months, without doing any traveling :-)
Speaking of the basement office/shack, I obviously haven't gotten anything major done since I was away, but I did get a little bit done over the weekend. I had been debating for some time what to use as a bus bar behind the desk for station grounding/bonding. Ultimately, I went with the "budget" option that, per N0AX in "Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur" is perfectly acceptable; a piece of copper pipe. In his book he recommends 1/2" pipe, but I used 1" pipe for the extra surface area, and because for a short length, it wasn't that much more expensive.
As I mount the gear, it's face will be flush with the other side of the wall, and it's backside will stick through, just above the copper bus bar/pipe, giving me easy access to the common ground.
I also wanted the first ground rod to be as close to the operating position as possible. Since this wall is 4' back, to run my strap from the pipe to the ground rod up (or down) and over to the wall, then to the ground rod outside, would have meant at least 15' of strap before hitting ground. To avoid the potential issue with a long ground connection, I actually drilled a hole in the floor, and hammered in the first ground rod right into the dirt under the house. This keeps my ground connection to less than 2'. From that rod, I'll then tie to the one outside (which in turn I will connect to the main electrical panel's ground rod.) Some self-leveling concrete caulk, and I'm ready to add the straps.
I still have a lot of work to do, but it's certainly fun being able to finally work on the shack "infrastructure" now that the living space part of the room is done!
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