Ron D'Eau Claire wrote: > Also, be careful if your antenna is disconnected but not grounded. You can > get a painful jolt touching the feeder if it has collected > rain/hail/sleet/snow static. It's not uncommon to see sparks jump from the > center pin to the shield across a PL259 or similar connector under those > conditions.
FWIW: The "usual suspects" again put Alpine County CA on the air in the CQP at the beginning of Oct. Our camp is at 8,400' in the Sierra Nevada, it's not uncommon to get snow, and we did this year. We were using a 765 Pro II, you could see the precip static on the baseline of the spectrum scope, and at one point, the Pro II quit. We had a spare, and later on in another snow squall, it quit. We finished up with an IC-706. My experience with snow static many years ago in the northern interior of AK is that what you hear [if anything] isn't what does in the front end of a radio. The charge will steadily build, tiny little leaks create the noise, and finally, the voltage is high enough to either arc over at the connector or inside the radio. The total charge [in coulombs] is very small and an RF choke or bleeder resistor across the antenna connector will keep the voltage to acceptable levels. I'm pretty sure the K3 has such a bleeder, not sure about my K2 and KX1. All bets are off however should a big spark from the sky land on your antenna. 73, Fred K6DGW Auburn CA ______________________________________________________________ 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
