[TowerTalk] Vertical antennas and lightning

Gary Schafer garyschafer at comcast.net
Sat Jul 31 17:26:20 PDT 2010


It would be best to be disconnected from the coax and grounded.

A shunt inductor will do nothing to shunt a lightning strike to ground as
most of the energy in lightning is centered around 1 MHz.

Having a shunt inductor or resistor from the feed point to ground will drain
static but will not help prevent a strike.

An open antenna is not a good idea as the lightning energy will find its own
path the ground and probably not in the place that you  would desire it to
go. With the antenna grounded you control what that path is.

73
Gary  K4FMX

> -----Original Message-----
> From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:towertalk-
> bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Dan Schaaf
> Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 5:20 PM
> To: Tower and HF antenna construction topics.
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Vertical antennas and lightning
> 
> Here is a vital question before I complete my vertical antenna design.
> 
> In the case of a ground to cloud lightning storm, is it better to have the
> feedpoint of the antenna disconnected from coax or switch in a shunt
> inductor ?
> 
> In other words open circuit to ground or closed circuit to ground.
> All coaxes will be disconnected at the entrance to the shack anyway,
> regardless.
> 
> Dan Schaaf
> ==================================
> K3ZXL www.k3zxl.com
> Cape Cod Instruments www.gnm-inc.com
> NOBSKA www.nobska.net
> ==================================
> 
> Sent from my Ham Radio computer since I do not have a Blackberry
> 
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