[TowerTalk] Lightning strikes!

[John Brosnahan]

>Call in to insurance agent...
>73 Barry
>--
Barry,

Sorry to hear about your damage.  I have been struck
with varying degrees of damage about 5 times.  Once on
an ungrounded vertical (ground rod was installed, just hadn't
hooked it up!!).  Once on the 160 4-square as I was watching
it, saying I wish I had hooked up the shorting bars across
the insulators for the summer.  Lighting hit the top of the
grounded base section--25 ft up, and ignored the remaining
130 ft above that.  Once on the utility power transformer on
the pole and blew it up.  And TWICE in via the phone line--
taking out the answering machines and modems.  

So my statistics point out the phone line --all underground
for 10 miles!-- as a prime source of damage!

Fortunately the insurance covered things when the damage
was severe enough to warrant a claim.  Ongoing upgrades
on lightning protection are in the plans--but the grounded
towers seem to provide a "cone of protection:  Oh, I forgot
about the time it hit the yard light on the steel barn.  Guess
I have been struck six times in as many years.  The light 
is below the ground level of the house but it is outside the
"cone" of the the towers.  So rather than hit the high stuff,
it hit something that is in a hole!  Took out some wiring in
a conduit that feeds the switch for the yard light.

Living on a hill can be exciting.  My senior dog heads for
the basement whenever there are clouds around.  The
strike on the ungrounded vertical did a lot of damage.  The
coax was tossed outside into a basement window well
and the force blew out the basement window, burned a lot
of dark smudges on the metal grid of the hanging ceiling
and blew some GFI outlets across the room.  Also turned
my RG-213 feedline into a box of scraps that were no bigger 
than your thumb.  Blew the PL-259 about 160 ft and caused
a "meteor shower" of PVC coax jacket to be blown into the
air that rained down on the roof.  Little bits of burning 
PVC everywhere--fortunately no fire resulted.  It was 3 a.m.
and I was on the toilet at the time--the RIGHT place to be
under the circumstances!

73  John  W0UN


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