I'm putting a small antenna up on my roof, atop a 10' mast. My E* satellites are nearby.

The sat dish has a grounding block on it, and a ground wire running down to my house's grounding rod. That wire runs right past the antenna mast location.

Here are my questions:

(1) Instructions I've seen always say to run the antenna coax through a grounding block "where the cable enters the house." Is there a problem with me using the grounding block on my sat dish? It has two connectors, and one is currently unused. That would put the grounding block location a good 50' from where the cable enters the house.

(2) I know I should also ground the antenna mast. Is it OK to use the existing ground wire (running from the satellite dish) by stripping a bit of insulation and looping it around a bolt? The mast is about "downstream" from the sat dish. That ground wire is connected to both the satellite dish itself (necessary?) and to the grounding block for the RG6 cable(s).


Thanks,
Ken

(1) This is okay.

(2) This should be fine. Use a proper grounding fasterner (hardware store) for this, as opposed to just wrapping.

FWIW, I don't ground my satellite dishes. They are mounted well below the eavestrough anyway. The tower is grounded with a system separate from the power ground in the house.

The tower is grounded with a system separate from the power ground in the house.That is a code violation. A separate equipment ground needs to be bonded the the main house ground to provide effectively single point grounding.
http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarchive/GB-HTML/HTML/GroundingSatelliteDishandLead-InCables~20020303.htm
http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarchive/GB-HTML/HTML/2002NECGroundingCommunicationsSystems~20020701.htm
http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Installation/Grounding.htm
http://www.cinergy.com/surge/ttip08.htm

(1) This is okay.

(2) This should be fine. Use a proper grounding fasterner (hardware store) for this, as opposed to just wrapping.

FWIW, I don't ground my satellite dishes. They are mounted well below the eavestrough anyway. The tower is grounded with a system separate from the power ground in the house.
Common practice doesn't necessarily make something right. Code requires antenna systems to be grounded (Article 810). Article 810-21(f), as greywolf wrote, specifies that they are to be grounded to the building's grounding electrode system.