In the fall of 1988 I installed a 160 foot tower. I already had a 120 foot tower and an 88 foot tower In the spring of 1989 the tall tower was hit by a direct hit and it was about 10K to repair all the damage. My homeowners insurance company was not at all impressed. I was given Assigned Risk Homeowners insurance and they also told me. You have 30 days to either get all those antennas and towers on the ground or else install a "Commercial Grounding System" or else your insurance is cancelled. At that time I am sure the mortgage company woudn't have been at all impressed.
During the summer of 1989 I installed. 100 Ground Rods some in a radial pattern away from the towers and some in a perimeter ground around the house. The Radial pattern from the towers is in excess of 1/3rd the total height of the tall tower. ground rods are all 16 feet apart. All are connected by 3/8" inside diameter copper tubing silver soldered to the ground rods. A total of about 1200 feet of copper tubing. I installed many Polyphaser protection devices on coax cable lines Rotors 5 of them on the three towers relay boxes to switch the 30 some yagi antennas on the towers and wire low band antennas. Hundreds of wires connecting all the relay switchboxes that select whatever antenna configuration you might want. In addition to all of the above we have Whole House Protection device on the main breaker box. And an additional one on a Sub Breaker box that is in the hamshack room. All devices in the hamshack have their own grounding strap that is connected directly to the ground strap a 2 inch wide copper strap along the backside of the table that has the equipment on it. As a last line of defense each Band Coax that enters the hamshack room has one of MFJ's Arc Plug switches and I have never blown any of the arc plugs. Because I am in Florida for 6 months of the year and the station is in Northern Indiana I operate it remotely while in Florida. I am the lightning rod for the entire neighborhood. I am within a few feet of being the highest point in the county. The tall tower has had MANY direct hits since installing the commercial style ground system in 1989. I had a Hit Counter on the tower for a few years until I broke it one day while climbing on the tower. I think the counter had over 100 hits registered. To Date ZERO DAMAGE to anything in the house or on the towers. That is ZERO DAMAGE. A great big THANK YOU to the guys at Polyphaser for all the advice as to what to install and where to install it. I do have to retract one portion of the above statement. Once after a major hit the whole house protector on the main breaker box was smoking after the hit. Wife came into the shack and said that box on the breaker box is smoking. I told Jean that the box wasn't old enough to smoke. She didn't see the humor in that one. I called Polyphaser on the phone and the nice lady asked me one question. Was anything in the house damaged other than the whole house protector? I answered NO everything in the house and on the towers is all OK. I then asked her to overnite me a replacement box since it was at that time over 10 years old and finally gave its little life to allow the rest of the house ZERO DAMAGE. We were into our normal major spring time storm season. New Whole House protector arrived and was installed the next day. And to date Twenty Nine years later ZERO DAMAGE Again a big thank you to Polyphaser Turn BLITZ into BLISS. So YES a Tower can be protected from damage. When the TV stations and Radio station towers get hit they don't even go off air. Neither does my Ham Station. Copy the URL below into your favorite browser for a you tube video of my QTH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXvRrummVFY The Video was made while we were installing a new low band receive antenna at 150 foot level on the tower. Drone and GoPro headband cameras. Yes that crane would do 275 feet from it's base. Yes that is ME in the Man Cage along with Dan one of the Fruchey Iron workers. I wearing the GoPro headband camera and my friend Dino Raptis KR9V operating his Drone. Thanks to Dino KR9V as all the video equipment is his and his editing to produce the You Tube Video 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]
