I'm guessing a ground rod to earth is going to be impractical. Look at your manual section 3-4 and it explains that you should ground the radio at the chassis. loss1234- Great progress! I just looked at the manual for your IC-765 and remembered the rig from when I used to sell them in the 80's.Cost is little less expensive than the Kenwood or Yaesu. The transceiver selectivity is a little better than the Yaesu FT-1000 series.These radios are reliable. Some state the receiver audio amplifier is a little noisy (hiss), but an outboard DNR speaker removes the noise including band noise.