Getting a good earth for LW, MW & SW

[Albert H]

Anyone with any kind of clue about lower frequency broadcasting will tell you that a good earth is often more important than a good antenna.

My approach works really well and doesn't cost too much (but does require some effort!):

I dig a pit - about 1m X 2m and about 1.5 - 2m deep. I connect some 10 Amp Mains flex to 2 X 90L Galvanised Dustbins (I use all three conductors, and spot weld the cable to the dustbins) so that both bins are connected together, and you have a long "tail" running away from them. I leave the lids off the bins, and put them into my pit side-by-side. I then put all the earth that I previously dug out back into the pit, filling the dustbins, and the pit. I then have a superb Earth - the enormous surface area of the insides and outsides of the bins provide a great connection to ground!

My most recent "Dustbin Earth" cost virtually nothing - the bins were being discarded by our local council "because their lids are missing"!!

I had a drum of 10A mains flex bought for a completely different project, which was ideal for the purpose. I now have an exemplary Earth!

If you have to buy a dustbin or two, they're widely available in DIY stores for £15 - £25 these days.

You MUST use galvanised dustbins if you want them to last a long time.,

[EFR]

Thats one way, where I live, law says that all buildings need to have ground loop around them, 16mm² copper deep at the soil. If there is multiple buildings at same are feed from same powermeter, their grounds must be connected to same point.

So, I have 5 buildings here, 3 of them are quite big, so +350m of copper under the ground.

If you go portable with you SW rig, there is lots of free metal structures to work as ground, or even as antenna.


Btw, you guys know these streetlights at rural area, long wooden pole, light at the top and big metal box down where wires and fuse are.

Someone might have spare time, open that box and he will find free power from there, nicely controlled by clock or lightswitch. He even might be wise and remove fuse before working at it, wiring rig mains to the lightpole mains after fuse.
But we dont steal electricity, wont we?

These poles normally (at least here) have 6 or 10mm² bare copper running from pole to pole, that would be bad if someone uses that as ground for their sw rig.

Maybe this guy has shovel, and digs coax from pole to nearby forest and trows an dipole to the trees, or even fullwave loop, poor trees have extra weight to carry and they will be tressed.

Messing with lamp power leads and ground with huge 16A chokes and suitable capacitor between rig output tuning will be so bad thing, that I wont even tell about it. Some poor bastard might even get that lamp powercord work as vertical, some poles are here about 12-15m high.

No one needs streetlight that works like it should, and blasts nice AM signal at 48m from endless casette all night, that would be horrible!

We dont to this? That would be very horrible thing to do!

[EFR]

Thats one way, where I live, law says that all buildings need to have ground loop around them, 16mm² copper deep at the soil. If there is multiple buildings at same are feed from same powermeter, their grounds must be connected to same point.

So, I have 5 buildings here, 3 of them are quite big, so +350m of copper under the ground.

If you go portable with you SW rig, there is lots of free metal structures to work as ground, or even as antenna.


Btw, you guys know these streetlights at rural area, long wooden pole, light at the top and big metal box down where wires and fuse are.

Someone might have spare time, open that box and he will find free power from there, nicely controlled by clock or lightswitch. He even might be wise and remove fuse before working at it, wiring rig mains to the lightpole mains after fuse.
But we dont steal electricity, wont we?

These poles normally (at least here) have 6 or 10mm² bare copper running from pole to pole, that would be bad if someone uses that as ground for their sw rig.

Maybe this guy has shovel, and digs coax from pole to nearby forest and trows an dipole to the trees, or even fullwave loop, poor trees have extra weight to carry and they will be tressed.

Messing with lamp power leads and ground with huge 16A chokes and suitable capacitor between rig output tuning will be so bad thing, that I wont even tell about it. Some poor bastard might even get that lamp powercord work as vertical, some poles are here about 12-15m high.

No one needs streetlight that works like it should, and blasts nice AM signal at 48m from endless casette all night, that would be horrible!

We dont to this? That would be very horrible thing to do!

[yellowbeard]

You'd be looking to get raided using domestic wiring for your earth. I know a guy that did it briefly on a 600 Watt medium wave - quite a bit of RF for a built up area. His neighbours had the audio very noticeable coming out of their fridge motor when it was running and he himself had audio faintly from his kitchen sink. Three or four people also had the TVI but mostly on older sets.

[FMEnjoyer]

Anyone with any kind of clue about lower frequency broadcasting will tell you that a good earth is often more important than a good antenna.

My approach works really well and doesn't cost too much (but does require some effort!):

I dig a pit - about 1m X 2m and about 1.5 - 2m deep. I connect some 10 Amp Mains flex to 2 X 90L Galvanised Dustbins (I use all three conductors, and spot weld the cable to the dustbins) so that both bins are connected together, and you have a long "tail" running away from them. I leave the lids off the bins, and put them into my pit side-by-side. I then put all the earth that I previously dug out back into the pit, filling the dustbins, and the pit. I then have a superb Earth - the enormous surface area of the insides and outsides of the bins provide a great connection to ground!

My most recent "Dustbin Earth" cost virtually nothing - the bins were being discarded by our local council "because their lids are missing"!!

I had a drum of 10A mains flex bought for a completely different project, which was ideal for the purpose. I now have an exemplary Earth!

If you have to buy a dustbin or two, they're widely available in DIY stores for £15 - £25 these days.

You MUST use galvanised dustbins if you want them to last a long time.,

Good info, but this is why no one bothers. Dig a pit, as if any young people are digging pits to get on air...

It is the same for RX, I remember being out and about with a SW receiver and put it on a massive iron gate and the signal went form barely audible to fully listenable and heard stations I had never heard ever before. It was maybe something like a 15-20dB increase at a guess. I suppose the same is true of radiated signals.

[EFR]

You'd be looking to get raided using domestic wiring for your earth. I know a guy that did it briefly on a 600 Watt medium wave - quite a bit of RF for a built up area. His neighbours had the audio very noticeable coming out of their fridge motor when it was running and he himself had audio faintly from his kitchen sink. Three or four people also had the TVI but mostly on older sets.

Heh, this place is old farm, and I just have old 35A 3phase and neutral feed from 20kV/400V transformer about 3km away, and that feed is underground one, and transformer has just one big farm with my site on it. "Nearby" houses are feed from smaller transformer on other side of area. Makes some problems with older 220V tubegear whens mains are around 250V nowdays.

We dont run ground from transformer to houses on rural area, incoming neutral is just coupled to the grounding bus in fusebox using 2.5m² or 4mm² wire.

That cable on picture is quite rf proof, all phases are twisted 1turn/meter if I remember right.

[Albert H]

Good info, but this is why no one bothers. Dig a pit, as if any young people are digging pits to get on air...

You'd be surprised - some kids just up the road from me have repurposed an old Codar AT5 transmitter to work at the top of Medium Wave. They bought a couple of dustbins, dug a deep hole (with the help of a rented minidigger), and put up a quarterwave sloper to the top of a disused water tower. Their little rig is going for miles in the daytime!

I supplied them with a little split-band audio processor, and a 250mW 500 MHz UHF link so they won't get an "Unfriendly Visit". I don't much like the material they play, but their transmitted quality is pretty good. All their pals listen to their station, so MW is enjoying a bit of a renaissance in this area!

[shuffy]

You'd be surprised - some kids just up the road from me have repurposed an old Codar AT5 transmitter to work at the top of Medium Wave. They bought a couple of dustbins, dug a deep hole (with the help of a rented minidigger)

You could've fooled me - the building firm I've just had working on my premises trains up apprentices on jobs and a couple of them were asking about various old kit I had knocking around. I almost gave up trying to explain what broadcast radio was. The irony is that these guys could probably have buried a couple of dustbins double quick.

[FMEnjoyer]

Good info, but this is why no one bothers. Dig a pit, as if any young people are digging pits to get on air...

You'd be surprised - some kids just up the road from me have repurposed an old Codar AT5 transmitter to work at the top of Medium Wave. They bought a couple of dustbins, dug a deep hole (with the help of a rented minidigger), and put up a quarterwave sloper to the top of a disused water tower. Their little rig is going for miles in the daytime!

I supplied them with a little split-band audio processor, and a 250mW 500 MHz UHF link so they won't get an "Unfriendly Visit". I don't much like the material they play, but their transmitted quality is pretty good. All their pals listen to their station, so MW is enjoying a bit of a renaissance in this area!

Clearly in the extremely small niche Dutch world of AM radio and in the Albert-o-sphere no doubt. An exception. Most young people will be down the doctors these days with an undiagnosed illness cause they left their mobile phone at a friends house for 24 hours and could not check Tiktok or Insta.

[Albert H]

It's funny you say that - my great-niece is just 7 years old, and listens to her radio almost all the time. This isn't due to my influence, by the way! She (and many of her friends) listen to the radio incessantly. She was amazed to discover that she could hear other languages on her little transistor portable during the evening, and likes listening to foreign broadcasts with their varied voices and different music.

I must admit that I was surprised when her Mother (my niece) told me about this, as I was quite sure that today's children and teens are pretty much as you described!

[EFR]

Some of new generation kids are diffrent, and that is nice!