[TowerTalk] Lightning Protection

[Patrick Greenlee]

Ditto from mast head VHF antenna on my sailboat.  Tick - tick - tick.  I 
discovered it was an intermittent arc at the chassis mounted SO-239 between 
the center conductor and shield.  I unscrewed the coax and shorted the 
center to shield..  No lightning in sight and no thunder heard, just static 
electricity in the air. Only experienced that one afternoon when arriving at 
Catalina Island from San Diego.  Mast head antenna was a shunt fed half 
dipole I shared between a 2m rig and a Marine Band VHF rig via a 1 in 2 out 
coax switch.

Patrick AF5CK

-----Original Message----- 
From: N4KH Jim
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2013 8:09 AM
To: K8RI-on-TowerTalk at tm.net ; towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Lightning Protection

I remember back when I was a novice class op I kept hearing a tick tick tick 
pop sound sometimes. Finally figured out it was coming from somewhere inside 
my DX60B transmitter whenever a thunderstorm was approaching, even when 
quite a distance away. It was the arcing as you describe from voltage/static 
buildup on my dipole antenna, probably inside the tvi filter unit on the 
transmitter. It never did any damage to that old tube transmitter that I 
could tell but after that i learned to always disconnect my antennas.
Jim