Midsummer maintenance.

Well, it really is gorgeous weather in North Wales for midsummer today!

Having had no sleep overnight due to observing noctilucent clouds until 2am, and having to get my son off to the school trip bus by 05:30(!), today hasn't been the most productive.  Mind you, I did spend some time up a ladder at 3am, greasing a length of cable on my tower.  It's very light at 3am now!

So, getting on for teatime, I decided to take a quiet sit-down and look at one of my tower's grounding points, and see if it was still working properly.

Now, tower grounding is one of those things that, quite often, we attach in a hurry, never really sure if we're doing it correctly.  Or, at least, that's how this particular ground point was installed!

One of the first questions that came to my mind with a sectional mast was: do all the sections have an adequate - or any - electrical connection with one another?  If not, then there's little point in attaching a connection for ground at the bottom of the lowest section.  In that case, one could of course 'daisy chain' each section.  Whilst mechanically easy, this arrangement would make for a very slow and complex lowering of the tower when bad weather unexpectedly hits!

It turns out that, testing with a simple multimeter, there was a good connection between the ground rod and the central section, showing that each section is electrically in contact with one another.  So the 'daisy chain' isn't needed.

After cleaning the ground connection point of one leg, no sign at all of corrosion.

One worry at the time of installation was that of corrosion due to the use of dissimilar metals.  I decided to use thick, tinned copper braid for this connection, because it's flexible and allows the tower to be luffed over without disconnection or other problem.  But the tower is galvanised steel, as is the hose clip securing the braid to the tower leg, and there's a lot of sea salt thrown at the whole thing during our frequent, violent storms.

So, off came the hose clip.  I was surprised to see the braid at the connection point was still - even after six years - bright and untarnished, like a new piece off the roll.   There was absolutely no sign of any electrochemical corrosion due to the dissimilar metals.

Very useful stuff.

I cleaned the whole thing, removed all traces of grease with acetone (nail polish remover), and applied a liberal amount of Innovantennas' wonderful, if extremely messy, 'ConductaSeal' conductive grease to the connection.  This is moderately expensive for a very small tin, but it lasts for years, and finds ever-more uses as time goes on.

Simple, and now covered in conductive grease, but it works!

There's also a much heavier, thick steel cable ground connection, more for lightning protection than anything else, off another leg of the tower.  That also proved to have a good connection to the other sections, so all seems well, if not beyond some improvement one day.