[TowerTalk] lightning vs insurance

[Jim Lux]

At 11:10 AM 1/5/2007, Thomas Tow wrote:
>Several years ago, maybe more than five, I went to the Polyphaser lecture in
>Dayton. It was very good including good projected diagrams and a great
>lecture. The layout they proposed was fantastic..trench after trench
>incasing a mountain of copper, wagon wheels of copper around the tower and
>house etc. The design was very impressive...and then after all of the
>reasons for such detail....the presenter said simply that nothing would
>protect you completely and that even the best layouts have flaws...or
>something like that. I thought...so why bother with these extremes if even
>the best of the best offers marginal  protection at best.
>
>And yes, I have been here and done this before: After dealing with the
>tornado disaster here in '97-- 168K damage to my home, antennas gone and
>equipment ruined..and dealing my insurance vendors and settlement procedures
>on all of that...I decided to pretty much do as little as I have to:
>ground rods, ice suppressors on my coaxes and rotors, tower grounds etc. and
>not obsess about it.  I took out a separate policy on just the tower against
>any type of damage and my homeowners covers the rest. I would guess the
>Polyphaser setup would cost $20K or so if done properly...Not saying that is
>a bad thing but it is a bad bet for dollars invested for me personally. I
>would much rather pay my homeowners insurance and the other dedicated policy
>and not worry about it. If I get whacked..I am paying in advance for that
>possibility.  Since, to paraphrase the Polyphaser guy...regardless of all of
>our time, money and efforts we are still subject to and cannot defeat the
>upper hand of mother nature.  Just another way of looking at it. Tommy WD4K



That's the difference between a typical ham, who can be out of 
service for a while, and something like a FAA tower, where they have 
to have more reliability.  For the FAA tower, you need the $20K 
setup.  I would venture to say that most hams don't.  And that's sort 
of the failing of a lot of the lightning protection literature.  It 
doesn't give you much insight into "cost effective half measures", 
but tends to be "do A, B, C, D, E, F, G, through Q, and maybe R,S, 
and T, and it might be ok"

Jim, W6RMK