[TowerTalk] Discharge with a dipole

[Jim Lux]

On 5/14/11 5:07 PM, Stan Labinsky Jr. wrote:
> Actually, since you are running the balun, you could just run a piece of
> copper flashing, say 1 to 1.5" wide from the coax shield to a ground rod
> just outside of the entrance of the antenna cable into the shack.  Would
> also be a good place to include a lightning arrestor which will protect your
> radio's receiver input and give a convenient place to make that connection.
> The balun is making it so you can run coax, unbalanced line.  Grounding the
> shield should not affect antenna tuning and will provide a path for any
> static buildup or worse.
>

But, you'd want to make sure  there's a DC path from the dipole (on the 
"bal" side of the balun) to the coax (the "un" side), to bleed off the 
charge that accumulates on the dipole.

I suspect that in a lot of cases, nobody observes any problems because 
the insulators get a bit dirty, and essentially make a high resistance 
leakage to ground, through which the charge can flow.  You'd never 
notice it from an RF standpoint.