Lightning can’t tell whether something is grounded because the energy pulse hasn’t gotten that far yet.
Lightning induces a current in every nearby conductor. When that pulse of current reaches a building or electronics, we want to provide a low impedance path to a safe sink (ground rods) and a high impedance path to the equipment (a choke). A lightning arrestor is a temporary low impedance path to ground for conductors that aren’t normally grounded. The best high impedance path is disconnecting your equipment. That won’t stop a direct strike, because that will induce currents in the disconnected equipment. But it will help almost all the time. wunder K6WRU Walter Underwood CM87wj http://observer.wunderwood.org/ (my blog) > On Jul 28, 2023, at 1:31 PM, Al Lorona <alor...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > 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. > > Al W6LX/4 > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to wun...@wunderwood.org ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
