[TowerTalk] Antenna to Shack Ground Connection

[Jim Lux]

On 1/29/15 6:20 AM, Patrick Greenlee wrote:
> Tendencies, not absolutes.

   It would be foolish to assume a charge
> dissipating system would work 100% of the time.


Not even part of the time.. Thoroughly debunked through analysis, 
modeling, and test.

Abdul M. Mousa, “The Applicability of Lightning Elimination Devices to 
Substations and Power Lines,” IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 
13, No. 4, Oct. 1998m pp. 1120-1127.

Paper was peer-reviewed by six reviewers under threat of lawsuits. Paper 
states that these devices do not work as the manufacturers claim.

google for "mousa lightning elimination" (there's lots of copies out there)

more references at
http://home.earthlink.net/~w6rmk/lightning.htm


  Grounding runs for
> lightning rods are of considerable size and are careful to bend gently
> to avoid lumps of inductance.


Gentle bends (or even sharp ones) do not change the inductance, as long 
as it's not a complete turn.  What bends do is create corners with small 
radius of curvature, which in turn leads to increase chance of an arc 
jumping from conductor to something else.




Otherwise they would be destroyed the
> first time they failed to defuse a strike.  Ask yourself what the sharp
> thingies are on those commercial towers for.  Do you suppose they might
> reduce the number and severity of strikes or are they just pretty
> decorations for birds and tower climbers to appreciate?

People buy stuff that doesn't work for all kinds of reasons.
Maybe the owner's nephew works for lightningeliminators.com.
Maybe the owner was misled by the snake oil vendor: "Our lightning 
eliminator was installed by NASA..." leaving out the "...for an 
objective test and it failed miserably"