@kilroy_was_here Agreed. You encounter diminishing returns and going bigger doesn't buy you what you may think.
Engineer here and I've been around, in, and seen installations that had to be absolutely lightning-proof and were engineered to be so. It's way beyond anything you or I could afford to do.
8 or 10 AWG is fine. If you want more you should switch up to braid and/or copper tubing, not waste your money on solid copper. Connections should be welded. They make thermite weld kits for making serious grounding connections. The cost for all that quickly gets out of hand for regular folks.
For ham radio grounding for lightning (high frequency, fast rise time) and for RF grounding for radio I recommend copper tubing. 1-inch solid copper is a pure waste of money when 1-inch tubing will do the same job.
@shuttersparks @kilroy_was_here As someone who was taught be the graybeards of 1990 on how to mitigate CRT acrcing-induced failures in video amplifiers, I can attest to using the copper tubing. Skin effect would drive the current to the outside of a rod or heavy wire. Braid is nice, too, but both are spendy due to copper prices. A flat conductor of any kind will minimize inductance, and that is more important as the ground wire length increases.
@Spud_Coolzip @kilroy_was_here Exactly. Back in the 1950s that construction technique was called "a plumber's delight". Hahaha.
