Well I think I had the experience of a lifetime today.. I was working out by
the 90 ft 160 Vertical and I started hearing some clicking. I walked closer to
it and could tell the guy wires were arcing across the insulators ( I used 25KV
electric fence insulators). I looked south and there it was a full blown storm
front moving right over my place. I moved over under the patio about a hundred
feet from the vertical. I heard a sound like the crackle of turning on a
giant CRT monitor a hundred times over. It was a very loud crackle just as a
strike went across the sky. Static is bled off the active element with an
inductor to ground but the guy wires float. The voltage must have been huge on
the guy wires as each strike in the sky produced a rather large crackling sound
from all 12 of the guy wires just as an overhead strike would occur. I
certainly was glad this storm front moved on after 5 or 6 cloud to cloud
strikes. It did not have to get very far away before all signs o
f static build-up disappeared. I am thinking of adding inductors to bleed off
the static on the guy lines as well. I had heard some static discharge before
when a dust storm blew through but not anything like this. I designed high
voltage CRT power supplies for Tektronix years ago but never encountered
voltage like this before. That has to be a lot of voltage to make corona in the
air. My ten year old boy says he saw arcing or corona travel up the guy wires.
I did not see it but did see a brite flash out of the corner of my eye. Sure
glad it was not a strike to ground through my antennas here. No damage anywhere
. Lee K7TJR Oregon
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