[scott784]

I've got an antenna on a mast which goes from the A part of the roof line (clamped down with brackets on the A part of the roof) all the way down to the ground, 30 feet below. At ground level, a separate steel grounding rod was then drove into the ground 5 feet deep with a sledgehammer with an additional several feet of the ground rod sticking up out of the ground. The ground rod was then attached with metal clamps to tightly secure the ground rod directly to the lower part of the anntenna mast near the ground. There's no actual ground wire attached between the mast and ground rod, but again they are tightly connected to each other with the metal claimps and screws. So as I understand things, the mast itself is grounded but the cable and rotator wire (running down the mast) and into the house are not grounded.

Now for my question, if I use a ground block to ground the actual coax cable wire and separate rotator wire, would I lose any of my signal strength? I am picking up some fringe tv stations perfectly and do not want those signals degraded. I only ask this question because it would appear any time a coax cable is cut and then connected back together, it would seem this is possible. The last thing I want is to have an antenna that may attract lightening as we move into the warm months and get thunderstorms. However, as I've said, I don't want to lose the signal strength I've got either. I've been told if lightening ever hits the antenna that it would most likely run straight down the mast and into the ground (since the mast is grounded with a ground rod). So do I take added precautions and ground the coax and rotator wire and possibly lose some of my signal or just leave well enough alone?