Hello,
I've read a lot of the submissions to this list with interest. One
question that I haven't seen addressed that is near and dear to me is
designing antenna structures for lightning prone environments.
Specifically, if you've got an installation with a nice ground system,
the cable grounded to the tower at proper intervals, and you've done all
the good surge protection/ground stuff, you obviously still don't want a
strike hitting your antenna. So, if you want an omnidirectional pattern,
you typically would like an antenna on top of your tower (Specifically,
I'm talking about vertically polarized dipole style antennas typically,
anywhere from 150-450MHz) But putting a dipole on top of a tower is just
asking for trouble. So, I've looked at Folded Dipoles which have a nice
center mast above the elements that you could even put a lightning rod
on. As long as the mast was a heavy enough gauge, it should take a
strike ok. However, the mast is still fairly intimate with the antenna.
So, my question is, what are some good ways to set up an omnidirectional
pattern on a tower in a way that you don't expose the antenna or
antennas unduly. For example, are there good side mount strategies with
multiple antennas? Is there a nice way to mount a lightning rod on top
with a dipole or something similar that won't screw up the pattern too
much? Other ideas?
The reason this has come up is I have an antenna installation that
appears to be the favored Anvil of God, and his hammer is coming down
regularly. I have plenty of installations that survive lightning storms
well, but this one in particular is the problem child. We get big
strikes with antennas literally blown off or vaporized (at least we
can't find the pieces.) In this case, it is mounted on the top of an
elevated water tank, not a tower, and there is about a three foot
diameter landing to mount antennas and such. My current plans are either to:
1) Mount a lightning rod on a separate mast on top with enough to height
to protect the antenna. Mounting this on the far side of the landing and
try to tune it to minimize the interaction and shadowing.
2) Figure out how to set up a system of antennas on the catwalk around
the circumference of the tank to generate an omnidirectional pattern.
This would probably be the safest, but I'm not sure how to generate a
good omni signal without nodes with a reasonable number of antennas
around the tank.
My favorite solution, moving the antenna off of the tank, has been nixed.
Any thoughts, comments, and help on this subject are greatly appreciated.
BenT
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