You suggest a great technique to keep the charge at a safe level, Ken. Some people advocate using an RF choke from the feeder to ground. That works FB too if the impedance of the choke is 10 or 20 times greater than the feeder impedance. The problem is that RF choke are series resonant at some frequency. When that happens it becomes an RF short. First most of the RF power gets burned up as heat in the choke. If close enough to resonance the choke literally "smokes" and self-destructs.
Been knocked on my behind from the static charge on a disconnected 100-ft end fed wire antenna when I unthinkingly touched it. I always *ground* the antenna feeder any time it's not hooked to the rig. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- 40 years ago we had a windy dust storm in Bismarck ND and I lost the RF amplifier in my new solid state Heathkit receiver three times that day before I realized the dirt and high winds were putting a static charge on my antenna. I found there was a capacitor between the antenna and the RF amp and the static would arc across the capacitor and burn out the RF amp. Of course tube type receivers did not have this problem. I found out a 100K resistor from the antenna to ground would prevent this and not load down the antenna... Ken W0CZ ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
