Thanks to the Elecrafters who responded with a raft of good ideas. That included W8JI, W4TV, K9YC, W9AC, N7MG, NN4X, KX4O, W3FPR, and AI4VZ (more or less in the order in which they responded. I hope I have understood and can render all the input correctly
Consensus seems to be that grounding, particularly making sure that all chassis are bonded together with the station entry panel and the powerline ground, is the best protection. I think this likely is where I went wrong, because I had just completed the radio and had not yet grounded it to my station bus, which is 3/4" copper pipe behind the radios, wired to the station entry panel with heavy copper. As I write this I'm in the midst of going through my station to make sure that everything is properly grounded. Several people provided ideas for component level protection, but W9AC found the Tripp-Lite DB9, which is a nicely packaged in-line protector that (they say) use "balanced arrays of high-speed avalanche diodes" to shunt the energy to ground. At $20 including shipping (Newegg was the cheapest I found) it can't hurt. I probably couldn't build it that cheaply, and it might help, particularly in combination with the grounding improvements. -- 73, Pete N4ZR The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at www.conteststations.com The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at reversebeacon.blogspot.com, spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000 ______________________________________________________________ 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
