Rev
      what is your take on grounding the dish meaning earth grounding.

Mine are just grounded from the dish to the grounding block and i have never had any problems.

I know that DW installers are suppose to ground the dish from the grounding block to a grounding rod or your house ground but alot of them do not.

*band installers which i'am do not have to do that it is not part of the standard installation.

Bear in mind that the DW6000's using .98m dishes get ALL THEY NEED for grounding via the coaxial cable grounding wire, plus the grounding block.  No need for the heavy wiring anymore unless you want to make your dish into a lightning attractor!  lol.... But, when all else fails yes, ground the hell out of it to see if it makes a diff.  Usuall not with the DW6000's.....MAYBE with the DW4000 and 4020 series.

The Reverend

Well, see how you are looking at it, but anytime you ground metal that is suspended you create a lightening rod.  POTENTIAL TO GROUND determines the possibility of being hit by a strike, so I don't ground my dish.  My insurance covers me if it fries the modem and system (plus I have 40 foot ground rods behind my antennaes because they both sit on top of an 80 foot tower ....so I let the rods and tower take the hits and pray it does't "tickle" my "radio"!!!!!  LOL

RULE:  IF YOU GROUND IT >>>>THE CHANCES OF IT BECOMING A LIGHTNING ROAD ARE 100%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers!

The Reverend

I put up the rods according to a book with specs (duals) and at the top you'll find dissapators that try to repel static charges and even lightening to a degree. They look alot like metal (silver) blows on Christmas gifts. heheh...

I will find my manual (I think) scan it then post it.  It's easy enough to follow.  If I did then then anyone can do it......

Also, when you are messing with potentially high voltage, do NOT grasp the wire with your hand.  Tap it with the back of your hand so that IF it is carrying a charge it does not cause your muscles to CLAMP so that you cannot let go of the sucker.  Using the backhand technique, you may get a tickle, but at least you won't be 'clamped' to the wire by your own muscles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  O M G !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   

The Reverend

*In a nutshell, if your dish is 5 feet tall, (including the mounting post), then you should put two 15 foot posts spaced 10 feet apart with SEPARATE grounding straps running to "earth"   (DO NOT JOIN THEM IN THE EVENT OF A DOUBLE STRIKE)!  That's a "rule of thumb" that is close enough ......"fire from the sky" is not "picky" in the least ...but it does love golfers.

Say cholla,

You only need to put an extra space between the Cool Smiley and your name in order for it to appear as an icon instead of what you see.    I do it all the time too!  :)cholla

In answer to the last two posts (excluding mine), yeah maybe and yes and possibly and hell no!  heheh...

If you ground an object rather than "floating" it, even with a ground we are talking millions of volts and high amperage.  I have lost two Radios to FIRE IN THE SKY and can attest that  I decided it was far better to stop grounding the appliance and give something really nice to offfer a better "potential to ground!"  Twin iron/steel rods on braided cable leading down to an array of six copper rods" in wet earth all the time keep the heat off my twin dishes for sure.  (But I have two back up units just in case it ever happens again).  Climbing an 80 foot tower gets old for an old poop like me

The "clamping effect" of electricity when mixed with muscles is something I have experienced first hand ......in fact, I wasn't directly struck but I was knocked off my feet by a lightning strike that I just could not escape.  I could smell the sulphur and knew what was coming, but there was no place to go but down.  Halfway on the way down she hit and blew me about 50 feet.  No damage, but my muscles twitched for two weeks. Brain damage is permanent, only got two cells working. One keeps me breathing and heart pumping, the other is for everything else.

No, I don't want to test the "foot trick" because my legs are not nearly as fast as electricity, which travels slightly less than the speed of light, and I just can't move that fast anymore!  (Except maybe if I smell sulphur again while in a field........chuckle).

Anyway, the bottom line for grounding is that everyone should try it.  If it makes no diff I do not recommended keeping it as I don't like grounding anything that is hooked up to my favorite toys in such a manner as to attract a "strike".  It IS good to run a light foil-like ribbon from the metal on your emitter (radio) to your pole just to discharge static (if you are in an extremely dry area (to include extreme cold (snow) with low humidity.  Static is bothersome for a dish just like it is with a car with no ground straps when you climb out of it, touch a metal part and your teeth go flying from the discharge "jolt". AI-YEEEEE.    Radio shack makes "foil kits" for just such a thing or you can get handy with Reynolds wrap and do the very same.  You just need some glue that will allow electricity to pass through it ....I have been up over 36hrs so the name for this escapes me at he moment other than it being "conductive glue."  The rule book for the .98m dishes when used with the DW6000s state that the coaxial cable used with a grounding block about 20 feet from the dish using 10gauge wire and a five foot copper rod is exceeding what they ask, and it works for thousands and thousands, so I can only assume they got ONE thing right with the DW series. 

Good enough for now, back to bed for me!

Cheers!

The Reverend

Heheh...I was just teasing you because what you are speaking of is part of all electrical safety courses at one point or another. IT DOES NOT WORK, but in theory they "claim" that it does.  So far, there are no survivors to present greater details upon this topical discussion, and so I rest my case.  Case Closed!  lol...

*If you ever sustain a heavy shock and can still think,  the very best thing to do is SLAM your heart (sternum) with both hands in hopes it will establish normal sinus rhythm.  All too often, you are so stunned you have no clue you are already dead due to your heart stopping and the cessation of breathing ...all in 7/16ths of a second.  I can't pick up my leg that fast and neither can anyone else!    Best thing to do is stand on something so that you are not grounded and use the right tools for the job, or hire it out to a pro that HAS the right stuff.  Electricity kills  - - it doesn't play favorites either. 

Foil on the DSS dish would work perfectly because that's what I have on mine ....but it is also grounded "to code" with #10AWG copper wire running to a 5 foot driven copper rod.  The foil just keeps the static off the dish, the ground it attached to the dual LNB and Internet Module (this is on my old system that has never been taken down ...meaning the DW4000 and smallest dish they ever made (the DSS (DirecWay Satellite SHooter =DSS) lol....  But, except for rain, the stupid thing never failsed us and never needed any attention.  Modems ran hot but a little fan took care of that.

Yeah, with a dry atmosphere and dry dirt, - - grounding THEN becomes a much needed part of installation.  Where I live it rains every day.   Worms drown daily here.  In fact, the rainy season lasts for six full months,    and then for six months it only rains a few times.   (We are at the uppermost (northern) part (centerred) of The RainForest, so you can just imagine how terribly WET it stays around here.  THe poles that make up my SAT TOWER are always soaking wet so what need do I have for grounding cabing? ...but  I did it anyway. 

                                                     

Only because somebody told me it could not be done.  HA!  Wrong-o Mary Lou!  heheh....

No prob on the icon, and thanks for the "tease" ...you're cool dude.  Your cool. 

"The Rev"  ;)

since rev is getting into all this, some more rules.

if caught in a thunderstorm in the open, no depression to crouch in, do the following. put your feet as close together as possible, crouch down, arms around your knees.

do not, under any circumstances, lie down. if you do, you may be slightly less likely to be struck, but if it strikes a tree or some such near you, the current will travel along the ground. the fun part is that the body conducts better than the ground, so, electricity always looking for the easy way out, the charge will bridge the six feet or so of ground you cover through your body. mhh, makes me feel tingly all over just thinking about it.

if there is a depression, of course choose that to crouch in. do not stand near trees or the like. even if it hits the tree instead of you, and grounds itself through the tree, the tree sap boiling away will cause largish chunks of wood to seperate from the trunk at a surprising rate of speed. (the sucker blows up)

slightly more likely than a lightning strike, you come across a live downed powerline. first of all, try not to touch it. (duh)

but then the problem poses itself, how best to leave the danger zone. the answer? hop.
looks silly, but akes sense. the reason: if you walk away, your legs will form a bridge across a piece of ground that the electricity will be only too happy to make use of. hopping or leaping away in bounds means that since you jump off the ground, then land in new spot, no arc is created by your body, so you're good to go.

all this going on about arcing, how is it that them damned birds sit on a powerline all F#@&ing day without turning into something akin to a roast chicken? well, electricity takes the easy way, so why should it bother with the relatively high resistance body of a bird if it can just zip underneath along that nice thick wire. of course, should the bird be unlucky enough to perch very close to a grounded part of a pole, thereby creating a space just small enough for the charge to arc from the line through the bird to the ground, well, don't you hate the stink of burning feathers?

the open field problem is one that often proves deadly for livestock. see the thunderstrom, see the lightning strike, see the cattle or whatever standing there on all four with their legs far apart, hooves stuck into mud, well, they get zapped by charges traveling along the surface, plain and simple.

other hazards include electrical fires. do not try to extinguish an electrical fire, especially one of higher voltage, with an extinguisher not rated for it, and maintain proper distance. the powder in an extinguisher will carry a charge to a point, so if you get too close, you can have the power arcing from the fusebox/transformer or whatever to yourself. ouchies.

then there is the incredibly devastating exploding wire. this is unlikely to happen to you, but fun nonetheless. take say 10 feet of fairly heavy gauge wire, place it on the ground, and attach one end to a good ground. now run say 110 kv at high amperage to the other end, and you will get a bright flash, bang, and a trench several inches deep, depending on the wire. this is because such a load will cause the wire to heat quickly, in effect flashing the metal to steam.

the moral of the story, if you are not 100% sure of what you are doing, call a professional. it is money well spent, as it will kepp you from paying a much higher price.