[TowerTalk] spider balls.. they work

[david jordan]

Jim,

It's the magic of radio...I think there is little objectivity when it 
comes to such studies...it's really in the eyes of the beholder or is it 
the lightning strike victim?

My practical experience is my guide.  I have a corona ball on my pick-up 
trucks AM radio antenna and it reduces the static pop in the receiver. I 
crank my towers down during thunder storms and I've never had a 
lightning problem. I use polyphaser protection and a ufer ground system 
as well.

If the porky pine gimmicks were cheap and readily available I'd put them 
on my towers just because they are so strange looking (might keep the 
bird off the antennas if nothing else) and just on the slight chance 
that in my part of the country at any random time that is relevant it 
just might be that for the instant of interest during that local thunder 
storm, the damn things performed as advertised, haha.

I think this discussion will have to end without closure because we just 
don't have a development planet to perform a significant amount of test 
that would comprise a properly validated and  objective test of the 
opposing theories.

It has been a fun thread but I don't have very high expectations, haha

73,
dave
wa3gin

Jim Lux wrote:

> A
>
>> How can lightning risk management be anything more than subjective 
>> views and marketing?
>
>
> By using properly validated and objective testing.  If the 
> manufacturer wanted to prove that their devices work, they could set 
> up two identical towers in an area with lots of thunderstorms and 
> lightning.  Place the widget at the top of one.  Observe lightning 
> statistics for some time.  Switch the widget to the other one.  
> Observe the statistics.  repeat a bunch of times.
>