[TowerTalk] Grounding of Amateur Radio installations

[Phil Camera]

Did you have a SPG?  Was it tied to the service entrance ground?  How about a shack ground and the computers tied to that?  Most likely is that strike induced current in your house wiring and that found it's way to ground via your computers.

We can't prevent lightning but we can take the measures to intercept that energy, control it, and more important, direct it to ground (where it really wants to go, in a bad way) before it enters our house.

As far at the tower and antenna, were the coax shields tied to the tower?  What kind of grounding system was the tower connected to?  (The best is 75 ft of ground radials for each leg with rods every 2X their height.)  Was the mast direct coupled to the tower before the rotator?  If any of these items were not there, then yes you'd stand to lose some stuff on the tower.

Sri abt that loss and glad no one was hurt nor any fire started in the house.

Phil - KB9CRY 
Lockport, IL 
http://nidxa.org/memberWWW/kb9cry_home.htm

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Pete Smith <n4zr at contesting.com> 

> Actually, I took a direct hit on my 40M yagi some 3 years ago, about 200 feet 
> from the house and 100 feet in the air. Thanks to disconnection, I lost nothing 
> on the radio side in the shack. Unfortunately, my wired Ethernet network 
> connections made a good antenna, and the induced EMP killed both computers. 
> Aside from them, we lost only the stuff on the tower, and a telephone answering 
> machine. I'm not sure that additional measures would do much to improve on 
> this. 
> 
> 73, Pete N4ZR 

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