I have taken several courses in lightning protection mainly for commercial communications systems. First, not grounding the antenna will NOT prevent a strike, and may even attract a strike. The most important part is grounding and bonding everything so it is all at the same potential. AC ground is very important. House grounding systems deteriorate over time, Check your house ground rod, you may need more than one if the ground is high resistance. All connection should be clean an tight, including those in the load center. (Breaker box). The ground wire should be #8 or larger, sized per the size of service. Attached to 8 ft ground rod. The ground wire must not run through metal conduit unless it is bonded at both ends (will work as a choke, blocking the surge flow) with no sharp turns. The most important is that ALL ground rods and systems MUST be bonded together with no smaller than #8 wire. (Using the above rules) A good ground on one system and bad on the other will cause the surge to seek the best ground, That is why is so important to connect (Bond) all grounds together. If you put lots of effort to assure a good ground system and good quality indicating surge protection, your odds of an expensive lightning loss is greatly reduced. Robert KD5YVQ
From: BVARC [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gayle Dotts via BVARC Sent: Monday, January 16, 2017 3:58 PM To: BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB <[email protected]> Cc: Gayle Dotts <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [BVARC] Lightning Strike Very nice!! Thank you!! On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 1:29 PM, Michael Monsour via BVARC <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: See illustration for the industrial isolation transformer On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 12:42 PM, Bill Dillon via BVARC <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Hi Gayle, There's a lot of information on lightning protection at: http://www.arrl.org/lightning-protection I think you definitely want to ground any antenna tower. There was a great talk on lightning protection at last August's Summerfest in Austin. The speaker had a contest-grade station, with multiple 100-plus foot towers that take several direct hits per year. What impressed me was the use of a system buried radial lines from the towers that had buried, eight-foot long rods welded to the radial lines at periodic intervals. Probably overkill for your station, but it is possible to protect radio systems from even direct strikes. I can't seem to find links to his talk from the Summerfest site, and a quick look didn't turn up the notes I took at the talk. In any case, hope you find the ARRL site of help. 73 de Bill, KG5FQX On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Gayle Dotts via BVARC <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: I’ve got a beach house in Gulf Shores Alabama. Last week it had a direct hit to the house by lightning, took out the refrigerator, 4 tv’s, phones, 4 surveillance cameras and much more. Luckily It had no radio gear or antennas there…which brings me to here… My NOW attempt to layer my radio shack for protection against lightning. Like unplug radio, power and cables, ground radio chassis. I’ve have heard an antenna doesn’t get hit as such until you ground it at which time it becomes a lightning rod and as such now attracts lightning, so don’t worry about the tower as much as the lines coming in. Is this correct? Sorry for being so chit-chatty guys but this is a real concern that got personal with the lightning. I don’t have much protection at all except a copper rod outside my window with the radio chassis grounded there. I guess I need to add more protection. I have watched you guys at field day just ground the line, I thought, coming off the antenna in to the radio area, was there more I didn't see? _______________________________________________ BVARC mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org _______________________________________________ BVARC mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org _______________________________________________ BVARC mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org
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