[TowerTalk] CATV & Phone grounds

[Keith Dutson]

Rather than thinking of lightning as an electrical current flowing from
ground to cloud or vice versa, I find it more interesting to think about
what it is composed of: plasma.  The free electrons and ions created by the
plasma must be neutralized by some method.  This is where current flow is
involved.  Pick a path and connect via some conductor (tower, copper wire,
tel wire, power line, water pipe, etc) to facilitate the neutralization.  It
is fairly easy to assume current will travel only one way on the conductor.

73, Keith NM5G

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Bill Turner
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:14 PM
To: Jim Brown
Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] CATV & Phone grounds

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:55:08 -0700, you wrote:


>Yes. If you think of lightning as DC, you're likely to be in serious 
>trouble. IEEE studies show that the energy content in lightning has a 
>broad peak around 1 MHz, with significant content well above and below 
>that range.

------------ REPLY SEPARATOR ------------

That raises an interesting question. As I understand it, lightning really
does flow in one direction, making it DC but having a square-wave nature. Is
that where the HF component comes from?
Lightning doesn't really change directions, does it?

Bill, W6WRT
_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk