[TowerTalk] precipitation static & folded verticals

[David Jordan]

My subjective experience with precipitation static...

Down on the farm the average noise level is between "S" zero and "S"
one.

When a rain or snow storm moves toward the my location the noise level
rises precipitously (no pun intended).  Especially in the case of snow
storms. On 160m I can hear them coming hours before they arrive.  The
noise is not due to contact by rain droplets or snow flakes upon my
antenna's elements as the precipitation has not yet reached my location.

I expect some of what I'm hearing is the electrical noise generated by
the rain or snow interacting with the metal roofs of buildings, bridges,
and the electrical grid network many miles away.

So perhaps there is a combination of things happening here, not just the
direct noise from charged rain and snow particles dis-charging on the
antenna elements but also electrical noise from faulty grid components
and just the billions of rain and snow flakes dis-charging on the
planets surface.

 My QTH in the city has severe electrical noise during rain storms.  My
local power company noise expert tells me it should be just the
opposite, i.e. the rain should quiet leaking cracked insulators but it
doesn't work that way here...very dry and very wet weather causes severe
electrical noise at my city location. However, the snow storm effect
described above is also apparent at the city location...very interesting
stuff.

HAVE FUN,
dave
WA3GIN


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