If you have a 50 foot tower with a tribander on it among a bunch of 70 foot or taller Trees then perhaps you will survive lightning strikes without major damage. However if you have something like my situation things change rapidly. I have three towers the tallest is 175 feet to the top antenna. Trees are all at 75 feet or less. I am the neighborhood lightning rod. I installed this tower in late 1988 and in early 1989 we sustained a major hit. It blew up every radio computer the microwave the frig the TV sets. lots of coax and many other things made from metal. My station is in northern Indiana so we do get some nice thunderstorms. Not as bad as Florida but bad enough. My Assigned Risk insurance company said you have 30 days to either get that stuff all on the ground or install a "Commercial Grade" Grounding system.
For the How to do it please read this 96 page PDF from Polyphaser. Polyphaser Grounding Guide After discussion with a couple of the Polyphaser Engineers who were also HAMS I purchsed all the goodies and we set about to create the ground system. It includes Whole House protection from Any wire that comes or goes from the house. This tower gets at least a dozen major hits per year. Since 1989 when the system was installed I have had Almost ZERO damage. The ONLY thing damaged was about 5 years ago the Whole House Protector on the Main Breaker box gave up its little life to save everything else in the house. I replaced it with a new one and all has been excellent prior to and since that time. The suggested Polyphaser Tower Grounding system looks a lot like that of the QST article from 2002 previously posted by one of our other posters. Radials 8 of them coming out from the tower. Polyphaser said they needed to be 1/3rd the length of the top antenna with 8 foot ground rods each 16 feet along the radial. And of course one of the radials goes to the house where the Single Ground Window... big aluminum plate with many protectors and two ground rods to hold it in place is located. And the Perimeter ground progresses around the house from that location. In my case since I have three towers in a triangle shape they said single run from tower to tower with again 8 foot ground rod each 16 feet along the way. Then rather than the 8 Radials from the single tower there are two starting outward from each of the other 2 shorter towers. #2 tower 130 foot and #3 88 foot tall. On those towers are about 20 yagi antennas 5 rotors and many many antenna switching boxes. Mostly Ameritron RCS-8V many modified as phase controllers for stack yagis. The back yard has 100 8 foot long ground rods connect by 1200 feet or 3/8" ID copper tubing. Silver Soldered to the Ground Rods. So read and heed the PDF from Polyphaser. It works!! 73 John k9uwa John Goller, K9UWA & Jean Goller, N9PXF Antique Radio Restorations [email protected] Visit our Web Site at: http://www.JohnJeanAntiqueRadio.com 4836 Ranch Road Leo, IN 46765 USA 1-260-637-6426 ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to [email protected]
