Topband: Lightning makes antennas vanish

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

I had an 80 half wave inverted L, up 67 out 70 feet, made of #12,
strung with great difficulty between two tall trees, that really
worked well. The vertical came down to my tractor shed from the
western tree and went through the wall with insulation to an tank
circuit tuner on the inside wall. In a lightning storm all the #12
from the outside of the tractor shed to 3/4 of the way to the eastern
tree just simply evaporated.

There were no obvious char marks anywhere, and the tuning network was unharmed.

If it could to that to #12,  doing it to #17 would be easy.  Not that
I have any technical explanation for what happened, just that it
happened.

73, Guy.

On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 10:11 AM,  <mikefurrey at att.net> wrote:
> The feed point of my inverted L was blown apart and the copper inside the
> insulation (both the "L" and horizontal elevated radial) was reduced to a
> black, brittle mess from a lightning strike and an adjacent neighbor's TV
> was reduced to a melted pile of plastic. My antenna is suspended between a
> couple of 80' pine trees on my small lot. There were (still visible) also
> char marks on a tree that was used as a support for the elevated radial. The
> radial was about 6" from the tree.
>
> Mike WA5POK
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eddy Swynar
> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 8:47 AM
> To: Tom W8JI
> Cc: Topband at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: Topband: Lightning makes antennas vanish
>
>
> On 2012-07-08, at 9:34 AM, Tom W8JI wrote:
>
>>
>> Anyone else have this happen? My copperweld #14, that clearly has arc
>> pitting where it passed over other wires, shows no damage other than the
>> arc
>> pits. The cad-steel fence wire must get so hot it just vaporizes. I can't
>> even find any pieces of it.
>>
>> Since the 1960's or 70's, this is the very first time I've seen this
>> happen.
>> Are thunderstorms more violent now, or is wire cheaper?  :-)
>>
>
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> Are you sure you weren't the victim of "...copper nappers", possibly...?!
>
> There was a report in a Toronto paper the other day where some cell tower
> used by emergency forces of some kind in that city was knocked off the air
> for several hours---thieves had snipped as much copper & wiring that they
> could see, for re-sale to the scrap metal market...
>
> That answers your last question, i.e. wire is NOT getting any
> "cheaper"---not by that stretch of the imagination! Hi Hi
>
> ~73~ de Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ
>
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