Outdoor TV antenna grounding question

[Joev1973]

Ok Hello all and thanks for having me. I need some advice and joined this forum hoping to be pointed in the right direction.

First off I am not an electrician and dont know the first thing about grounding or wiring.

I will try to explain it the best I can.

I recently moved to Middle Tennessee in a very rural area. No cable tv or internet is currently available at the home we purchased with a few acres. Did I mention cell phones barely get a signal out here and only ar&t work we had to switch over upon moving here.

I bought a small indoor tv antenna and stuck it in the window and we were able to pull in only 4 channels. On some days if I rescan we can get 7 or 8 but can rarely watch them as they pixelize and disaapear.

I talked to a couple people at a local market who have old school tv antennas (not cheap modern chinese crap) and are picking up 50-70 channels from nashville and even some from Huntsville Alabama.

I stopped by my nearest neighbors house to see his set up and he does in fact pull in far more channels than I imagined.

Out in my yard I have a antenna mast tower approx. 20 ft high with no antenna on it. Its heavy duty and in the perfect place on the property to pull in a signal from Nashville 60 miles away to the north.

100 ft from the antenna mast is my living room wall where our tv is located.

So I went to channelmaster.com and purchased the longest range outdoor antenna they had (after weeks of researching antennas) I will attach a photo of the antenna. Its rated at 100 miles, im aware its debatable if a vhf signal can reach an antenna at 100 miles but I wanted the best chance at doing so. The transmission towers im after are 60-70 miles and Im getting a few with a $20 walmart indoor antenna. Buying this big boy for outside and having it high up on a mast has to increase my chances to pick up the signals.

The antenna I purchased does not have a motorized rotor as I didnt want to run electricity to the mast. Just point it in the degrees of Nashville and bolt it down as my neighbors have done.

I purchased the antenna and a pre amp booster suggested for my zip code by channel master. The pre amp does not require its own electric as it works by taking electric it receives from the coaxial cable it uses to attach to the antenna. Antenna and booster arriving tomorrow.

I then started thinking about the need for grounding the antenna and the coaxial cable so purchased a coax ground block and a spool of #10 solid copper grounding wire. I also purchased a 5 ft copper grounding rod to ground both the antenna mast and the coaxial cable at the mast and have 120 ft of burial coaxial cable running to the house under ground.

I thought everything out carefully as fas as parts and supplies I would need. Today I went out and sunk the grounding rod into the soil near the mast leaving only the top 6" sticking up so I can attach my copper.

I came in the house and started reading a little about grounding to make sure I would do it right and now I am not confident that I am.

Most articles I find pertain to antennas mounted on the roof of the home. And the antennas are grounded to the homes main ground under the electric panel outside of the house.

My antenna is going to be on a stand alone mast 100+ feet away from the house all by itself out in the field nowhere near the homes main ground.

The electric panel and main ground for the house couldn't be any further away than they are, completely on the opposite end of the property's. Im talking polar opposites!

I am also now reading that 8' ground rods are needed?

So keep in mind this antenna is on a stand alone mast and not powered. The little booster add on is powered but from the coaxial cable that carries a charge from inside the house where an ac adapter is plugged in that the coaxial cable runs through.

I had it all planned out for a clean neat install of an antenna that besides the coaxial just had 2 U clamps . Now this simple tv antenna is turning into a whole big thing.

Can someone tell me that its ok to ground the mast (pictured) and coax to its own grounding rod and not have to buy a country mile of copper wire and dig for a week to tie it in to the main ground of the home. I have to make sure this is safe and will work.

I know to an electrician this stuff sounds simple but again I am no electrician and I will appreciate whatever advice you can give me.

Also I would like to place the full blame for this project getting started on Eva Gabor. With only 4 channels I got hooked on Green Acres and devoloped a little crush on Miss Gabor. Now they switched networks and the new transmitter with green acres is a little further out. If you ever saw Miss Gabor you can understand my urgency.


Thanks to anyone who helps bring Eve Gabor back into my life.

 

[marconi]

Sorry, looked at your post late. Did you think about using 'free to air' satellite TV? In the UK we have FREESAT which just requires a dish to point in the right direction at the satellite and a decoder box between it and the TV. Just a thought. And there is also Sat TV one subscribes to such as Sky which has a decoder and recorder - in our case to record up to 4 channels at the same time.

 

[Megawatt]

Sorry, looked at your post late. Did you think about using 'free to air' satellite TV? In the UK we have FREESAT which just requires a dish to point in the right direction at the satellite and a decoder box between it and the TV. Just a thought. And there is also Sat TV one subscribes to such as Sky which has a decoder and recorder - in our case to record up to 4 channels at the same time.

@marconi he lives whey out in the country and he had satellite tv before he moved. He wanted to quit paying for tv so he took on this project and worked his butt off and was so proud when he got his favorite tv shows again.