One thing I learned over thirty years in the electrical field is that lightening does what ever it wants to. Grounded, ungrounded anything is possible to be hit. Now there are some things we can to minimize hits. In our case with the antenna. In the case with mine laying on the roof and yours on top of a fence the antenna itself is just a hunk of wire laying on the insulator, roof and fence. Now when we in practise hook it to ground through the radio we make it more attractive to lightening. Kind of like raising up a small mountian up. Ground potential raised up. Granted it isn't raised very high but this equipment is expensive. So all things considered I hope I remember to remove the antenna from the radio during storms. Ron ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Stephan To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 11:11 AM Subject: RE: [BlindHandyMan] antenna question
I'm really curious about this. I've heard lightning warnings from a lot of sources, and yes we do have some really spectacular storms, we Saturday morning with serious lightning, 80 mph winds then a dramatic drop in temps and snow and freezing rain. Is a wire antenna more attractive to lightning than say your barbecue grill? I'm just asking here, and fortunately I did have the radio disconnected during the storm. Bill Stephan, Kansas City MO Email: [email protected] Phone: (816)803-2469 -original message- Subject: [BlindHandyMan] antenna question From: cheetah <[email protected]> Date: 12/31/2008 10:51 hi well now you have your new radio running and your new long wire out there on the fence. remember you need to unhook that wire come spring time when ever a storm is in the area. believe me you do not want to see the lightning in your house. it is loud, smoky and tends to throw little pieces of radio or in my case computer all over the room. it majorly sucks Jim [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
