Good demo. To that cause, I'd like to share a true experience that happened to me as part of a group of Explorer Scouts on Field Day one year. I was an advisor, and had installed a ground rod, and connected a coax switch to it so that we could ground our antennas if weather threatened. The switch was inside a shelter.
The sky above us was clear blue and sunny. Off to the west were black clouds and lightning that was moving our way. I told the scouts to connect the antenna coax plugs to the coax switch. As we attempted to connect the first one from a dipole, we drew a steady blue arc to the shell of the switch. It was quite a gap, too. It was blue sky and sunny in our half of the sky. Yet, the static build up from the storm caused enough voltage to arc that much. That was hard to believe. As a footnote, I made the mistake of holding the coax switch with one hand, while holding the PL259 with the other hand. It was like touching the tip of a spark plug. ----- Original Message ----- From: "stan levandowski" <sjl...@optonline.net> Cc: <elecraft@mailman.qth.net> Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2012 9:04 AM Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Antenna static charge precautions - any tips? > Short but interesting demo of antenna static discharge - good motivation > - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSpZ-ffacA - (BTW, I've heard the > FT-817 has a 22K resistor installed but don't know that for sure) > On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 9:28 AM, hawley, charles j jr wrote: > >> Which begs the question...why isn't a 100K across the antenna jack in >> the original design? >> BTW, I use a choke across the antenna leads. >> > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
