Honestly, my last couple QTH's I was on the second floor, and not able to 
run an RF ground and I never had a problem without one. As long as you have 
the antenna grounded for lightning protection, I'd try without, or put 
counter poises for any bands you use regularly off the ground screw on the 
radio but I never needed one and know many in that same boat with no 
problem. Luckily the RF ground doesn't protect against lightning, if 
lightning gets that far you're already in more trouble than you ever want to 
be in so you probably might as well run no RF ground, or the counter poise 
idea unless you want to run an artificial ground. Where I am now I can run a 
ground but this is the first time in all my ham years I can and I may not 
bother based on the lack of problem in the past without one.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Brennan" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2012 6:44 PM
Subject: grounding question


> I'm living in an apartment where they've agreed to let me put up an 
> antenna on a
> 14ft pole but they only want me to have a single grounding point for my 
> system.
> I have a 9ft ground rod but I need both an rf ground to the radio itself 
> and a
> ground for my lightning arrester on the antenna.  Is there any way to 
> ground
> these both to a single ground rod?
>
> Tom
>
>
> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html