In article RI1vc.2576$Y21.814@lakeread02,
"Jack Painter" wrote:

Pi*D is circumference, or Pi2R.

1" pipe exceeds the surface area of 3" strap. As totally impractical as
copper pipe would be as a bonding conductor in almost any application, it
would make an excellent RF ground connection on shore facilities where it
would offer several times the surface area of a solid ground rod half it's
diameter. Copper pipe is commonly filled with conductive salts which leech
through holes in the pipe to maintain high conductivity in ground rod
installations.

Best regards,

Jack Painter
Virginia Beach, Va

Jack my boy you need to go back to school and refresh your geometry.

Pi*D is circumfrence This is true. Now what is the outside surface
area for one inch of length of 1" dia copper pipe?
Lets see 3.1416*1"=3.1416 3.1416*1" length = 3.1416 Square Inches.


Now lets look at 3" copper foil.....ok for Inch of length
we have 3.0 inches square inches of surface area on the front
side and 3.0 square inches of surface area on the back side.
That makes a total of 6 Square Inches of surface area per 1"
of length. We will ignore the thickness of the foil, just because
it isn't significant for the terms we are discussion here.

Now which has more surface area per linear inch?

3.1416 Square Inches for the copper tubing........

or

6 square Inches for the 3" foil........

Hmmmmmmm, wonder what could be the answer.........

If you like, you could think of the copper tubing as being flattened
into a bar and measure it again and it still wouldn't approch a 3" foil
for surface area.

You don't get to include the inside surface area of the tubing, because
RF flows on the outside surface only, but even if you did, you would
still come up a bit short on surface area when compared to 3" copper
foil.

We aren't talking about Shoreside systems on this thread as the original
poster specificly asked about shipboard installations. You observations
about copper pipes being used for Grounding Rods in MF/HF systems
instead of solid copper has some merit, but most RF Grounded Antenna
Systems in the Maritime Mobile Radio Service use a 1/4 Lambda Radial
Grounding System designed for the lowest Frequency that the antenna will
be used on, with interspeced radials cut for 1/4 Lambda at the other
major operating bands. These type antennas really fell out of favor
in the 30's and 40's for Non RF Grounded Antennas like the Rhombics
that Pt. Reyes, CA (KMI) used. They had a set of Phased Rhombics that
could be steered to any point from due South to due North, on 4, 6, 8,
12,16, and 22 Mhz. No Grounding required, and a Frontend smoking signal
everywhere in the Pacific.



Bruce in alaska
--
add a 2 before @