[TowerTalk] Whole house surge protectors

[Jim Brown]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 19:27:28 -0400, Joe Giacobello wrote:

>I must have missed something.  I didn't know there was an issue 
>regarding noise emanating from surge protectors.  Please explain.

A surge suppressor conducts when there is a noise spike on the line 
stronger than it's threshold, and that spike flows to the "ground" 
wire. Any wire, including one we CALL a ground wire, can act as an 
antenna, so that current spike can be radiated by the ground wire 
(antenna) and be picked up by your ham antenna. 

In addition, many surge protectors also have capacitors between the 
line and the ground pin. They will also conduct HF noise to the 
ground wire, with the same result. 

Jim Brown  K9YC