Lightning is attracted to the highest point contact on earth from a cloud passing overhead. If your tower, or tree in the yard, the chimney on your roof, or the roof itself can be the closest to the heavily charged cloud passing just overhead. When the leader from earth, tree, building or tower is attracted to the opposite charge in the cloud and contact is made through the ionized air, the charged cloud will complete the contact and then the intense lightning bolt discharges to earth or structure with millions of volts of energy.
With that in mind, the best way to handle that charge is to spread out that discharge of all the energy. I have ground rods placed around my tower at 10 foot intervals, all the ground rods are connected with #6 stranded copper wire buried about a foot deep. The coax cable has the shield grounded at the copper rod at the base of the tower. I also have the coax shield grounded at the ground rod just outside the shack before it enters the house. There are a total of 8 ground rods around my house starting at the utility power line input including the ground rod at the coax entrance. They are all interconnected by buried # 6 stranded copper wire. I also have an antenna (Alpha) 4 pole switch to ground the coax inside the house. A final measure is to disconnect the equipment from utility power at the station as well. We do not receive as many storms as Southern states do here in MA, but it only takes ONE, and we had a bad one back in 2005. It was a ground strike somewhere on our hill and it knocked out computers, TVs garage door openers, telephones, and other electronics all across the hill to as many as 20 houses. The flash of lightning was blinding as I just happened to be looking towards the windows facing the hill behind our house where a high tension tower and lines cross the hill about 300 feet behind the house. I remember checking for damage throughout our house and I witnessed blue corona from lower level outlets , very unnerving to say the least. So I take grounding VERY seriously and followed the ARRL latest book on Bonding and Grounding. Spread out the discharge of millions of volts of energy. Dick / W1REJ ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
