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[TowerTalk] Grounding Unselected Tower Coax Switch

To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Grounding Unselected Tower Coax Switch
From: w8ji.tom@MCIONE.com (Tom Rauch)
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 07:36:07 +0000
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
> Date:          Sun, 22 Mar 1998 08:33:32 -0800

Hi Dick,

> My primary reason for thinking it made sense to ground the unused antennas
> was for static discharge.  If they were grounded, any static buildup would
> be automatically and continuously drained off to ground.  The negative
> scenario I envisioned was to have a floating antenna building up a
> significant static charge and then switching my radio onto that "hot"
> antenna.

In that case it makes sense. To avoid that problem, I use a small 
choke or high value high voltage resistor across the antenna 
feedpoint.

The reason I do that is I learned a hard lesson when my T network 
tuner charged up and flashed over into my RX system wiping out 
about a dozen hard-to-service components. Of course that 
happened even though the antenna was already selected, so grounding 
of unused antennas wouldn't have helped!  

The really silly part was I thought I'd put a choke on the offending 
antenna as soon as I could, and in the mean time avoid operating when 
the WX even looked poor. The next week it happened again on a clear 
but windy day.





 IMO, having a 
> 
> 73, Dick
> 
> --
> Dick Flanagan W6OLD CFII Minden, Nevada DM09db (South of Reno)
> Visit http://www.qsl.net/w7di/
> 
> 
> 
73, Tom W8JI
w8ji.tom@MCIONE.com

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