Hi Jim and all,
> First, you need to recognize that the 2nd floor windows are too
> far from ground to be of value. What you do there is cosmetic,
> and weather seal only.
I agree as far as grounding to earth, but disagree as far as
lightning protection. I'm doing something in a similar situation for
a friend of mine right now.
One of the main goals in adding lightning protection is to clamp
everything to the same potential so everything moves together.
Grounding is second in importance to having everything entering the
room tied together.
I would install a room ground to the same common point as the cables
at the window. I'd have a plate inside the room where ALL of my power
lines, telco, and equipment ground. I'd have one plug leave that
common point to an outlet (or a 240 plug also, if you needed a
separate circuit) and run all the equipment to a nice bypassed outlet
strip.
I'd use the widest flashing possible to a ground, and route the
coaxial cables down to a ground before bringing them up to the room.
Then there is one or two plugs to yank during non-use, and minimal
worry if you forget.
> Second, in addition to providing a ground panel at ground level
> for antennas and control cables, on the downstream (station)
> side of them, I would route all cables through a piece of iron
> pipe about 4' long. Ground it, as well, to the single point.
Why iron and why only 4'?? You might as well use any metallic
conduit, or better yet just directly bury the cable. I think the idea
of using iron pipe must come from some misplaced notion that ferreous
metals add inductance to the path, but the effect is negligible much
above dc. Since lightning has the bulk of energy above a few dozen
kHz and contains no dc, the effect of that pipe is minimal.
There was a myth that even made it into the handbooks that fine steel
wool would act as an RF choke or balun. In fact, it lowers the
impedance of the cable shield passing through it by increasing the
effective diameter.
As an example, when you drive your big hulking steel and iron car
over the imbedded road coils operating an oscillator at a few kHz
that sense for traffic lights, the oscillator frequency INCREASES.
> It will act as a choke for transients which get across the
> ground panel, forcing arcs to ground at the SPG.
>From experience making direct RF impedance measurements I'm positive
any change in series impedance of the system would be minimal. You'd
be MUCH better off to simply coil the coax in several large turns in
air or on a PVC form than to stick it in a pipe.
The pipe does decrease shunt impedance, and if long enough will help
move current out to the surface of the pipe due to skin effect, but
that has nothing to do with it being iron. It can be any conductive
material, and copper or a low resistance would actually be better.
Look at transformer and choke designs. Without thinly sliced
insulated laminations a soft-iron core has no ability to increase
inductor or conduct magnetic flux even at 60Hz. At higher
frequencies, you have to powder and the insulate each particle of the
core to have it be effective.
With lightning, you'd need a high impedance from a few Hz up to many
hundreds of MHz, with the impedance peak in the dozens or hundreds
of kHz range.
Someone either has a wild imagination or total lack of RF experience
if they are telling people a short iron pipe would act like a
significant impedance to a time-varying current like lightning.
Even a few turns of wire (say ten feet of overall length) in a large
air-core loop would have significantly more series impedance than
five feet through thick iron pipe.
> I am assuming that what you do at the SPG provides an ESD gap,
> so excess voltage is dumped to ground across all coaxes and
> rotor/control cables. ICE does this.
All I do is use shielded control cables, and ground the shields. You
could do the same by burying the cables or running them through
any metallic conduit (even diamagnetic materials) that is best
grounded at BOTH ends, or at least the house end. The protected
length has to be long.
I have diode clamps on dc control lines using 1N5408 diodes and
electrolytic dump capacitors for minor surges. I have MOV's on my
power lines and telco lines at the common point shack ground, and RCS-
8V's on antenna leads.
There isn't a SINGLE lightning bypass on any of my coaxial cables,
including a repeater system that runs all the time and is in a
shed under my 300 foot tower. Lightning hits have melted the shields
of cables back in my receiving arrays and vaporized antenna
wires, but I've yet to lose a single piece of equipment in the house
of any type despite leaving everything connected.
Grounding at the towers and using proper common grounds with power
and telco lines is the key. That is what makes or breaks the
system.
If it were my system, I'd bring the cables past the telco and power
line entrance and ground them there, and then come up to the room
entrance. I'd have everything in the room grounded or bypassed to the
common point room ground, as well as all the feeders and control
cables bundled with shields grounded at the service entrance of the
house.
73, Tom W8JI
W8JI@contesting.com
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