Does a no-radial vertical antenna still need a lightning ground?

Yes. Lightning protection is a safety system governed by electrical code -- ground rods, heavy conductors, and arrestors at the entry panel -- and it belongs on every station regardless of antenna design. No antenna exempts a station from lightning protection.

Why does a Greyline vertical dipole need no radials?

Radials are the return half of a quarter-wave antenna's circuit. A vertical dipole has both halves in the air, so the circuit completes by design and the earth is never hired for the RF return. Rudy Severns, N6LF, measured in QEX what the earth charges in loss when it is.

Three Grounds Walk Into A Shack: Lightning, RF, And The Bond Between Them

Q: Is RF on my radio chassis a grounding problem?

Usually not. Hot-mic bite and USB dropouts are typically common-mode current on the coax shield, and the measured cure is a proper choke at the feedpoint, per the published ferrite data of Jim Brown, K9YC.

by Jon Kimball, KL2A август 19, 2026

Signal Lab -- The Week's Lesson

An operator wrote in this week with the grounding question -- the one every ham asks eventually, because the word "ground" gets used for three different jobs and the hobby rarely stops to untangle them. Here is the untangling.

Job One: Lightning Protection

This ground exists to give a strike somewhere better to go than through your radio. It is ground rods, heavy conductors, short straight runs, and arrestors at the entry panel -- a safety system, governed by electrical code, and it belongs on every station regardless of what antenna you run. The canonical text is Ward Silver, N0AX, Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur (ARRL) -- read it before the storm season does its own inspection, and let your local code have the final word on your installation.

Job Two: The RF Return

This is the "ground" people mean when they bury radials -- the return half of a quarter-wave antenna's circuit. Rudy Severns, N6LF, measured in QEX what the earth charges for that service in loss. A Greyline vertical dipole does not hire the earth for this job at all: both halves are in the air and the circuit completes by design, which is why there are no radials to bury. But note what that does NOT mean -- it does not mean you can skip Job One. No antenna design exempts a station from lightning protection.

Job Three: The Bond

Bonding ties every ground in the system -- utility, station, tower, arrestor -- into one electrical point, so a nearby strike cannot create a voltage difference between two "grounds" and send current through your gear to equalize it. Most grounding damage stories are actually bonding stories. N0AX again: single point, everything connected, no exceptions.

And The Fourth Thing People Call Ground

RF on the radio chassis -- the hot-mic bite, the USB dropouts -- is usually not a grounding problem at all. It is common-mode current on the coax shield, and the measured cure is a proper choke at the feedpoint. Jim Brown, K9YC, published the definitive ferrite data; his work is why our chokes are built the way they are.

See the Greyline RF Chokes →
See the Feedline System Kits →

Homework, free of charge: N0AX's book for the safety half, K9YC's choke papers for the RF half, and the TopBand archive at lists.contesting.com for thirty years of both being argued by people with measurement gear. That is the bookshelf; we just point at it.

Ham Radio is fun again! Pass it on...

73,
Jon Kimball, KL2A
Greyline Performance -- Sun Valley, Idaho
435-200-4902

86%

(55)

11%

(7)

(1)

(0)

Great Improvement!

Living in Florida, prepping for high winds and hurricanes isn't uncommon. Now that I have the tilt-up base installed for my DXF-24 flagpole, that preparation just got so much easier. Remove one bolt, loosen the other, and the antenna comes down easily and goes back up just as easy. It's now a one person job. Besides storm prep, it makes any preventative maintenance less of a chore.

Like the Greyline antenna hardware, the tilt-up base is beautiful. Added bonus; the flagpole just got a little taller! 73, N3EQF

Thomas — you described that base better than our own product page does. 'One person job' is exactly the design goal, and hearing it from Florida during hurricane season means more than any spec we could publish. Thanks. 73, Jon KL2A

Flag pole

I enjoy having my 24 foot flag pole antenna. It looks great and with the pivot bottom it will be easy to repair or maintain if needed. Great job.

Thank you, Don. The 24 is the height where the low bands start paying you back — try 20-30-40 after as darkness approaches. Have fun. 73, Jon KL2A

20' antenna with 9' whip

Fit and finish is top notch. First contacts once installed were Vietnam and Tuvalu (4 bands) from Eastern NC! I ordered the 20' DSV with the 9' whip. No HOA (rather I'm the HOA on my farm:). Talked to Jon K2LA about the truck between the 2" section and the whip and he told me they're developing an aluminum cap for the transition rather than using a truck. I'm looking forward to swapping for that.

I am having difficulty tuning 6m and 160m; all others work fine with my LDG AT1000Pro2 tuner. I also notice the receive is around 2 S units quieter than my OCF Dipole. Still readable but leaves me scratching my head as to why. Perhaps it's me or the conditions in my yard. I am using LMR400 and a Polyphaser. Could be the loss introduced by the added connections.

I ordered the 4 foot extension and the tilt whip. They shipped today. I'm hoping they will make an operational difference aside from the ease of putting it up and taking it down.

Busy company. You need a little patience when communicating with them. Automated answering service picks up when you call. Best to send a clean e-mail from their "contact us" link on the web site.

Edited my review (5 stars) after Jon K2LA's very thorough explanation.

Christopher, Vietnam and Tuvalu on four bands from Eastern North Carolina --
those are serious Pacific paths, and they answer most questions about this
antenna before I type a word. Thank you for the detailed report. Let me take
your three puzzles in order, because the next reader will have them too.

The quiet receive is the one to reframe: quieter is not deafer. Your OCF
dipole is a horizontal wire using its coax as part of the antenna -- which
means it hears your house, your neighbors' switching supplies, and every
bit of common-mode trash along the feedline. The vertical, choked at the
feedpoint, hears less of all that. The honest test is never the S-meter --
it is signal-to-noise. Same station, both antennas: if he is as readable or
better on the Greyline while the meter reads lower, your noise floor
dropped, and that is the feature, not the fault. You already wrote the
evidence yourself: 'still readable.' Watch FT8 SNR numbers side by side
for a week and the meter mystery usually solves itself.

Six and 160 are the two ends of the rope. First check that your tuner
covers 54 MHz at its rated range -- not every desktop auto does, and 6
meters is outside several of them. On 160, a 29-foot radiator is working
hard; dress the ladder line straight and clear -- no coiled slack, off the
ground, off metal -- because coiled balanced line is exactly what pushes a
marginal 160 match out of a tuner's reach. Your 4-foot extension, shipped
today, helps the low end honestly but modestly.

The aluminum transition cap: you are on the list, as promised.

And the fair hit on patience: guilty, with an explanation. Every antenna is
hand-built to order by a small shop, and the same hands that answer the
phone are on the bench. Your instinct is right -- a clean email through the
contact page gets the fastest, most complete answer we can give.

Enjoy the tilt base -- and when the extension goes on, I want the Tuvalu
rematch report. Bands are up and down this month as Cycle 25 slides
down the other side of it's world class peak. The pleasure is ours, Christopher.

Ham Radio is fun again!
73, Jon KL2A -- Greyline Performance
435-200-4902

The only thing you could change is the length of the threaded stud to incorporate flag pole lights. It is not long enough.

Patrick, fair engineering note -- but that stud is prime real estate, and
the penthouse only sleeps one: whip, lights, or gold ball, pick your
tenant. We give the spot to the whip because it is the only one of the
three that pays rent in decibels.

The smart trade is whip up top, lights down low: a pair of solar spots
staked at the base washes the whole flag evenly all night -- which is
exactly what the Flag Code asks for -- and keeps the aluminum overhead
doing its one job, which is Tuvalu after dinner on 20M for you!

Four stars for a part doing double duty as your DX aperture and your
flag truck? We will take that trade too.

Satisfied Customer

Upon receiving the 24’ vertical, I was impressed with the overall quality of the antenna. All parts are made with the finest material and the fit and finish of the antenna is exceptional

I did not get the installation done until the 30th of July and I am having some difficulty tuning until I removed the 1:1 balun I had purchase for it. It appears to load nicely on all bands except 6 meters and 80 meters. This may be an issue with my MFJ 998 tuner. (More to follow on that)

I did notice the latter line to coax black plastic box does not like direct Alabama Sun in late July! It got hot enough to show deformation from the heat!

Update from Charlie WB4MFF: resolved with a tuner reset — now loading the full 160–6! Great work. Ham radio is fun again!

1 2 3

Three Grounds Walk Into A Shack: Lightning, RF, And The Bond Between Them

Job One: Lightning Protection

Job Two: The RF Return

Job Three: The Bond

And The Fourth Thing People Call Ground

Leave a comment

Let customers speak for us