[TowerTalk] SNOW STATIC

[Jim Rhodes]

Once, more than a few years ago, I was playing around with an L-tuner for a 
random wire. The thing was breadboarded on a piece of 2x6. Anyway, I walked 
into the shack during a real snow storm and before I turned the lights on 
heard a "crack- crack- crack". I looked over at that tuner and it was just 
arching across the command set capacitor at the rate of about 2/sec. I 
didn't even turn on the light, just stared at it for a few minutes, decided 
that I didn't want to touch ANYTHING in the shack and left. Went to the 
window & looked out at the wire antenna and the wire had about a 3 inch 
coating of wet sticky snow on it. It was only about 18G wire & it stayed up 
for about an hour before it broke from the weight. At the time all the rigs 
I had were hollow state, so no damage there but it taught me that 
lightening is not the only reason to ground unused antennas.


At 08:26 PM 11/11/2000 +0000, you wrote:
>Does anyone have any suggestions for reducing or eliminating static due to
>snow?
>
>My normally quiet location (S2 noise level) has jumped to S6-8 because of
>snow. I SWEAR I can hear each snowflake strike the antena(s).
>
>Ron, KA9ALC
>
>
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Jim Rhodes K0XU
rhodes@evertek.net


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