[TowerTalk] Sparky Pays a Visit

[Dennis O'Connor]

Having been through two lightning strikes ten years apart at two different QTH, I sympathize with you.. My experience is that the only rigs that survive are those that are on the bench with their cables wrapped around them and not connected to anything, and especially not grounded  (right after field day and the IC706 laying on the bench in front of the Omni 6, is just fine, thank you)  Everything else in the shop was fried, as was the well pump, some 180 feet down, and even the wall clock exploded it's motor windings and flew off the wall...  Now, none of the radios in the shack had antennas hooked to them and the 110 / 220 power breaker to the radio bench was off/open (it fried also)... But the current surge rode in on the rotor wires to the rotor boxes, arced across the cases of the rotor box(s) to the cases of the radios and amps blowing chunks of paint off the cases, none of which had antennas hooked up but were always GROUNDED for safety, and everything fried of course...  
My employees who were in the shop at the time said they were blinded by the glare of the arcing inside the building (no fires)... Consumers Power Company came out an inspected the damage for the insurance claim and said I was properly grounded and that a hit of that magnitude, estimated in excess of 60,000 amps by them, is uncontrollable...

denn