I wonder if some of the time and effort put into building elaborate
grounding systems for towers and such might not be better invested in
making the actual signal paths more lightning tolerant.
For instance, it makes no difference whether the tower rises 1kV, 10kV
or 30kV relative to the shack: they're all enough to cause potential
problems. So, is it worth it to put in more ground system than is
necessary to make sure the tower isn't physically damaged?
For control lines, particularly for slow speed things like rotor
controllers, I think it wouldn't be too hard to build bullet proof
galvanic isolation or transient suppression. Enough L in series and C
in parallel, along with appropriate over voltage transient suppression.
it's the broadband RF signals that will be the challenge. but what is
the real magnitude of it? You could probably help a lot (particularly on
higher bands) with a DC block between equipment and feedline; but since
160m isn't that far from where the energy peak is for lightning, I don't
know that this is the silver bullet. A DC block (and a DC ground for
the center conductor, on the antenna side of the interface) would sure
solve the electrostatic charging thing, though.
I think the "common mode" problem can be fairly easily solved with
galvanic isolation techniques (transformers, capacitors, etc.), it's the
differential mode that is going to be challenging: e.g. the voltage
between center conductor and shield.
A kilowatt into 50 ohms is a bit more than 220 Volts, and you've already
got to stand that. If you put transient suppression that clamps at 750
or 1000 Volts, you've already limited some of the problem.
The receiver front end is a challenge. The traditional approach is to
put some sort of low voltage clamp (back to back zeners, for instance)
across the input that limits the voltage to less than what the first
mixer can take.
Or, to put a narrow band filter. Maybe the long term solution to HF rig
lightning protection is to put in a good filter that passes the HF band
of interest, but is a short at other frequencies (including the
lightning transient). For "one frequency at a time" operation, that
filter could be quite high Q, and acts as a preselector and could be
tunable.
But more folks are doing waterfall and pan displays, so I think a
"practical" solution would need to pass an entire ham band.
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