[TowerTalk] Broken Johnny-ball insulators

[Pete Smith]

At 09:57 AM 10/23/03 -0400, Cqtestk4xs at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 10/23/03 1:37:27 PM Greenwich Standard Time, 
>n4zr at contesting.com writes:
>But I'm really curious what
>would cause such a failure,
>
>Lightning arcs?
>
>I recently replaced some of my ceramic insulators when I was putting up my 
>fiberglass cable.  I found the same thing on many of them, but several 
>also had arc-marks.  Lightning?

It may be no coincidence that I took my first direct lightning hit at the 
end of August.  On the other hand, none of my rotators or the Stackmatch 
show anything nearly so dramatic -- in the Stackmatch, the lightning simply 
vaporized the circuit board traces from the terminal strip to the MOVs, 
which were also burned.  But the #16 wire connections through which the 
flashover voltage came were all intact.  Maybe a combination of water 
infiltration, cracking through freezing, and lightning finding its way to 
ground -- the bottom guys are grounded.


73, Pete N4ZR
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