[TowerTalk] Rain Static - Anything to Do?

[Pete Smith]

This morning, there was a steady spring rain outside when I turned on the
radio, and as a result I had rain static -- it sounded like one "sput" per
drop hitting my antennas -- that added up to an S9 +10 noise level in SSB
bandwidth.  Pretty tough.

Is there fundamentally nothing to be done about this?  Did W3LPL and others
have to deal with the same problem today? Or if there is, what are the
remedies?

BTW, the antennas in question are a Force 12 C-4 and a lazy-vee array on
80.  While the antenna elements are mechanically insulated from ground,
each antenna lead has a 1.5 meg resistor from the center connector to
ground (in my antenna switch) to drain residual static.  This seems ro be
impulse noise directly related to the drops hitting the antennas.



73, Pete Smith N4ZR
n4zr@contesting.com 
West (bigawd) Virginia

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