[TowerTalk] Rain drops noise on Yagi (dipole)

[Guido Tedeschi]

On our contest station we have an old but good KLM 3 element linear 
loaded Yagi for 40m, 20m high, which works fine except for the high rain 
drops noise on RX.

Normally we have an average noise floor of S1, but during last CQWW SSB 
and CW contest, we suffered rain during nights and the noise on 40m 
raised even to S7-8 when the rain was strong.

Is there anything I can do, to avoid or greatly attenuate that noise?

There is a coil across the dipole feed (sometimes called Hairpin), to 
match the impedance to 50 ohm, followed by a current balun/choke; what 
if I connect the center of the coil to the boom/ground, could this help?

Thanks and 73

Guido, ik2bcp