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Tesla Ground 2/2

July 3          Building my new Tesla Ground

I got out to the new home site yesterday afternoon. Supplies that
I brought along included a shovel, large hammer, some large steel
gutter nails, propane torch, solder, sheet metal screws and a
permanent marker. I picked up a couple of shanks of rebar that
were laying about.

With half of the foundation already backfilled in I focused on
the remaining trench. The soil is mostly rock, but the clay
filling in the gaps is a very rich red and very moist. I tried
digging, but a pickaxe would have been a better tool...

After about an hours work, I had only suceeded in trenching in
one 10 foot section of 14" inch aluminum flashing. Too much time,
too few results. I decided to unroll a heavy copper strap that I 
had dropped into the copper salvage box. This had been a strap
primary, unrolled it was fifteen feet long by three inches wide.
It was made up from three thicknesses of 10 mil copper sheet that
are spot soldered to prevent separation.

The deepest section of the foundation trench is about eight feet
below the ground and near the northwest corner. The corner was
carved out of decaying limestone by the heavy equipment, but the
stone is layered with the pasty clay, and the backfill dirt they
are using is trucked in. Using a length of rebar and the heavy
hammer, I chiseled out a vertical groove to fit my copper strap.
The top of the strap reaches the ground level about a foot from a
marked surveyors flag. I placed the strap in the groove, and
using the gutter nails I hammered it securely into place in the
rotting stone. Then I split the laminations of the strap open,
and where possible I drove a couple of rebar shanks into the
crumbling rock to further hold the strap into place. I wrote the
lot number on the top of the strap with the marker, and labeled
it as an "RF GROUND" and added "DO NOT REMOVE".

At the bottom of the foundation trench I unrolled about forty
feet of aluminum flashing. I folded it over once to get around
the foundation corner. Where it passed over the copper strap I
used a large nail as a punch, then screwed the two together with
sheet metal screws. I finished off by chopping up large lumps of
clay and burying the entire length of flashing.

Today it is raining and I am nursing sore muscles and a few
blisters on my palms. My clothes were all but runined... But
hey! I have got a pretty decent RF ground. If I recover before
the holiday is over I will head back out and pull up the end of
the copper strap and solder on some radials made from sections of
soft copper tubing. 

Richard Quick
... If all else fails... Throw another megavolt across it!
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12