Please don't laugh at me; I'm a transplant from a region of the country with 
essentially no lightning to a region where you have to worry about it quite a 
bit.

We had a doozy of a storm last night, with lots of lightning overhead. I felt 
like a sitting duck, even though I had grounded both sides of the balanced 
feedline of the antenna, switched the antenna switch to the middle (grounded) 
position, and even disconnected the coax leading to the K3's rear-panel antenna 
port.

Whenever lightning happens, I always wonder if it really is in fact better to 
ground everything. Because, doesn't that essentially make a lightning rod of 
the antenna? If I simply disconnected the antenna and left it floating, 
wouldn't it be less likely to attract a lightning bolt?

I'm of the belief that it's better to try to avoid a direct hit than to attract 
one and trust your grounding system to do its thing. I'm of the belief that no 
grounding system is perfectly effective.

AlĀ  W6LX/4

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