Hi. Keep in mind everything for most of us is ALL a compromise. That said, If hit nearby, lightning will not just hit the HF antenna but will couple into everything near it. The best thing you could do in this situation is install an 8 foot rod as close to the slab as you can keeping in mind you probably won't get it out but will have to drive it down under grade should when you leave. I think your VHF antenna currently routes some other way. If you can, route all l coaxes downward toward a common protected point just under the RV inside plastic food storage box?) for some weather protection. Put a transient suppressor on each of the two coaxes and mount both on a small plate or simply bolt together and connect a heavy wire from that combination to the ground rod.. That antenna is a roughly 16 foot "*no counterpoise needed*" stick with a 8:1 or 9:1 (depending where you read) unun fed with a random length of 50 ohm coax into the shack. Hmmm. The actual impedance and efficiency is all over the place. My opinion is the best thing you could do for your station is to raise the antenna to clear the roofline, remove that unun and connect directly to a remote antenna tuner (Yeasu F*C*-40/LDG/ICOM or similar) which can weatherproof well and lay on top or secured to side of RV with a at least a few radials thrown around. Now you have a base-tuned antenna with efficiency increasing with frequency. The coupler (and everything else needs grounding; a bolt to RV metal and decent size wire down the RV to the ground rod. Weather seal those coax connections! (Your pics).
On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 10:34 AM Jeff Thomas via BVARC <bvarc@bvarc.org> wrote: > All, > > Looking for some antenna advice. The antenna is a HF-360 with a 6:1 UNUN > connected to a Yaesu FT-991A. The mast is insulated from the RV. > I also have a FT-40 coming as suggested by Yaesu but not sure if it's > needed yet. > For radio purposes do I need to ground the mast/antenna with a ground > rod? (I am planning to do this for anyway for lightning protection, just > looking for some validation) > Should I ground the coax here as well? > > Thanks for the advice! > > Jeff / KI5RPL > > > ________________________________________________ > Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club > > BVARC mailing list > BVARC@bvarc.org > http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org > Publicly available archives are available here: > https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/ >
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