FWIW, I have never had lightning come in on power, phone, cable or anything else like that. All our services are underground for miles prior to reaching our house, and that probably helps.
We DID have a direct lightning strike on the house several years ago. It struck an attic fan on the roof and followed the electrical wiring to the boxes in the basement, branching out wherever it could and knocking out the whole electrical system. In the process, as it blew up boxes and panels, it blew out a chunk of PVC carrying water from the well into the pressure tank. And it blew the tank. It also started a small fire in the attic (insulation), but that didn't do too much since the large hole in the roof allowed rain to come in for about 5 hours before we returned home from work. The rain, however, caused sheet-rocked ceilings (especially over the two-story foyer) to sag. And of course with no power, the sump pump was out and the basement flooded (to a depth of about 6 inches until I could run a line from the neighbor's house). The EMP (or something ...) was apparently strong enough to even knock out wall clocks that were battery operated. At our Fire Dept. station (about 2 miles away), the Chief said it sounded like a bomb went off. We were 30 miles away at the time, but our two little kitties were in the basement and when I let them out 5 hours later, their fur was still standing on end. So this is a problem when living in the country where houses are far apart, there are no power lines to "catch" the lightning and the only physical connection into the ground of any significance is a PVC pipe going to the well (which was also blown out thru the wiring). The lightning actually exited the house on the natural gas line. The damage was extensive, and we had to evacuate for 5 weeks. It was another 4 months or so before everything was completed (we did some upgrades in the process). Since then, I have had a lightning protection system professionally installed under the direction of an engineer who guesstimated our strike at 50,000 amps. I had no antennas of any sort at the time, but I do now and have protected it as best I know (see box on QRZ page). 73 Lyn, W0LEN -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Wilson Lamb Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 8:40 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Elecraft Digest, Vol 196, Issue 17 I have 2X K3, but am not even qualified to to talk about them. I CAN say, without reservation, that our antennae are NOT our primary danger points, at least for those of us with modest (50' and under) installations. In 65 years of operating all sorts of stuff, I have NEVER seen lightning damage due to antenna pickup. I have seen LOTS of damage level stuff come in on phone lines, however! Most thunderstorms in our area create firecracker discharges in my phone demarc box, which is just across the basement from my operating area. They scare me, especially when they occur when I'm disconnecting my phones/modem, which are connected to the outside world with alligator clips. I have lost multiple phones and modems to this stuff, when it exceeds the impressive levels the demarc can handle, but never anything to do with radio. This is a great fringe benefit of WIFI. The stuff we used to lose through ethernet connections is now airgapped from the modem. Pulling the plug is almost foolproof protection. I don't connect computers to radios, so there's an airgap already in place. When I see the storm coming, I disconnect all radios from their antennae AND power supplies. Now, I KNOW lots of people have suffered from antenna pickup, but I'm betting power/phone lines have produced far more incidents. Trouble is, if you get a real hit on an antenna, all bets are off and my experience doesn't matter at all! If you set up to run from a battery, you can achieve considerable isolation, especially if you unplug the charger before storms come. It would be interesting to hear stories of damaging events caused by phone line transients coming into houses. WL ______________________________________________________________ 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]
