Jay for Pete,
You can never protect yourself enough from lightning strikes. (I wonder how
they do it in commercial radio stations such a BC stations and cell towers.)
Myself, I have nine (9) grounding rods at the bottom of my tower, I have a 6
inch wide aluminium ribbon between the tower and the entrance through the shack
wall. Everything is connected to one grounding point in the shack AND I
disconnect everything when I am not there plus I connect the "lose ends" of
every wire coming from the tower to ground.
Haven't had any strikes in my tower yet so I don't know what will happened.
Hopefully I am not in the shack if I get a direct hit.
I am not sure how well a long run underground will protect you. If the shield
of the coax is bare and touching the ground all the way it will help, but
that's not the way you want to bury the coax anyway.
Underground power cables are not attached to tower and are therefore not so
prune to lightning strikes as the air cables between utility poles. :-)
73 de,
Hans - N2JFS
-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Smith N4ZR <n4zr@contesting.com>
Every time Towertalk starts off on one of these threads I feel compelled to add
one skeptic's viewpoint, and this time I'm actually going to do it.
...
I am *not* that engineer, so I decided 17 years ago that my installation
would have quick-disconnects for every conductor coming from the tower,
at the panel where they enter my second-floor shack. I leave them
disconnected except when I am on the air. I should probably have the
disconnects at ground level, but I felt I would be more likely to
disconnect them if they were right at hand.
A few years ago, I took a direct hit on the top of my tower, some 190
feet from the house. I was in the shack at the time, and the SO-239...
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