[TenTec] OT: Lightening Protection for Openwire/Window Line

[Joel Hallas]

While knife switches have been popular over the years, the big ones with
wide spacing are hard to find. My approach is to have a balanced arrestor at
the entrance panel and then I have 3/4 inch spaced banana plug and jack
between the arrestor and the line to the tuner. When I'm not on the air with
that antenna, it is pulled out and feet away from anything.

The only balanced transmit level arrestors I'm aware of in recent years have
been from ICE and mine is one of their earlier series. Their arrestor line
is handled by array solutions and they now have a new design
http://www.iceradioproducts.com/. It is also possible to use a pair of coax
type arrestors, but determine the voltage at that point on each band due to
SWR and make sure that you select arrestors that won't flashover with the
RF.  

I use a similar approach for coax fed antennas. I have arrestors on the
grounded panel and then use PL-259 push on adapters on the radio side. One
yank and they're all well removed.



Regards, Joel Hallas, W1ZR
Westport, CT


-----Original Message-----
From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Carter
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:12 AM
To: tentec at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TenTec] OT: Openwire/Window Line and Bad Wx

On 7/29/2013 11:31 PM, Richards wrote:

 > A second question is what lightning protection devices are preferred  >
for securing open transmission line?
 >
 > ===============  K8JHR  ================

I'm not sure what is "preferred", but what I use is a large DPDT knife
switch, one side to the tuner, the other position to ground.

Although I don't use one, there is always the ever-popular dual spark gap as
shown in the old (and maybe newer?) Handbooks.

Finally, for static mitigation there is the high value resistor from each
open wire conductor to ground.

73,
Carter   K8VT


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