Re: [amsat-bb] Lightning and neutral grounding

["Edward R. Cole" <al7eb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ah yes..."you mid-western, southern never saw a mountain or glacier folks"!
 {smile}

Well that may work in nice organic, sandy, clay, whatever soil.  Try it
where 100,000 years ago the glacier laid a few hundred feet of rock and
gravel.  Up here they call it country rock.  We are fortunate to have
four-six inches of organic soil over the gravel.  

To dig a hole you take a 30-lb. 8-foot long iron breaker rod and lift and
pound by hand for 10 minutes until you have broke up 6 inches of the
compacted rock and gravel then scoop it out.  The pound away for another
ten minutes and repeat.  After an hour you may have a two-foot hole.  This
is for setting fence poles.  I was home a few years ago at my 82 year-old
Dad's Michigan farm and marveled while I watched him dig a three foot post
hole by hand in ten minutes with a clam-shell shovel.  Nothing like several
feet of sandy-loam.

Up here, to drive a ground rod you just pray that you don't get 4-foot down
and hit a 1 foot rock "potato", necessitating starting over again a foot
away.  The water trick doesn't work because rocks just fall back into the
way.  Electric company auger-trucks regularly break their bits drilling
power pole holes.

Of course this only works six months of the year....its frozen 4-8 foot
deep the rest of the year.  The plus is it's good foundation for building
or making driveways.

On top of a small ridge, say a couple thousand feet high (they're not
mountains until they are above 3,500-feet), you never will find "ground".
Its just a pile of rocks!  ...and everything up there is for lightening to
hit.  Fortunately here on the coast we only see lightening once every 3-4
years!  Earthquakes and Volcanoes, however, are more frequent.

He! He!  Regards from Alaska!

Ed - AL7EB
PS: I didn't tell you that the bonus was that you wash the gravel and rock
with water and then collect a few ounces of gold with each hole ;-)  {Hey,
Tom Sawyer!  "that ought to get a few of them mid-western farm boys up here
to get my fence posts dug!"}



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