Would aluminum foil act as a ground plane?

On a friend's new layout, we used aluminum window screen sandwiched between the plywood and Homasote for any upper level areas with track below it.  Works great.

 

 

I sure hope so. My entire helix is lined with foil and tied to earth ground. I used spray adhesive to apply it to the bottom of the plywood before cutting.

 

OK, so how do you make a reliable connection to the foil?

I ran a bare steel wire around the entire helix and stapled it to each segment of the foil. Then I gave each staple a few taps with a hammer to make sure there was good contact.

 

If you had large areas of unbroken foil, take a short screw and make your own terminal. It's not like you are trying to conduct a lot of voltage or current with this.

Foil will work fine as a ground plane conductor-it's just a much larger surface than a strand of wire.

How about the new style duct tape? The stuff that's made of thin foil with pressure sensitive adhesive? Seems like it would be easier and faster than the foil with contact cement.

I have used heating/AC ducting tape, on 2 different layouts with great success.

- its cheap

- its actually aluminum with an adhesive backing, same width as track

- attach wire with a ring terminal and screw through tape to bench top

- where segment overlap, or relief cuts for curves, fold tape edge over and continue with continuity.  (keeping shiny edge touching each other.)

 

Hey Elliott

Why do I keep seeing an image of some of you wearing tin foil hats with a long earth lead attached, wandering around looking for somewhere to earth themselves? 

       
       


exactly what i was thinking... maybe jumper cables on some