First, make sure any ground rods or grounding system used in your ham shack is bonded to your house electrical ground. This is a common failure in lots of ham shacks. If a nearby strike induces voltage in your electrical system and your house ground has a higher resistance to ground than your shack ground, it will seek the lower resistance ground, by way of your ham equipment. This is why the National Electrical Code requires all supplemental grounds (your ham shack grounds) to be bonded with #8 ga or larger wire together. Robert KD5YVQ
-----Original Message----- From: BVARC <bvarc-boun...@bvarc.org> On Behalf Of Fox Danger Piacenti via BVARC Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2023 11:29 AM To: BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB <bvarc@bvarc.org> Cc: Fox Danger Piacenti <kelke...@gmail.com> Subject: [BVARC] Techniques for mitigating Lightning Hi all! During most storms I find myself disconnecting my antenna from my radio and staying off the air. I figure that a direct strike from lightning isn't something I can do much to mitigate on a household budget other than to not be the tastiest target for a bolt nearby. However I am concerned with strikes that are close enough to induce current strong enough to damage the sensitive electronics in my transceivers. This seems especially important for a place like Houston where our weather can be very extreme, and where having radio comms working could be helpful. What do you do to make your home stations more resilient to nearby strikes? How do these differ for UHF/VHF rigs verses HF? Best, -Fox, KW6FOX ________________________________________________ Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club BVARC mailing list BVARC@bvarc.org http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org Publicly available archives are available here: https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/ ________________________________________________ Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club BVARC mailing list BVARC@bvarc.org http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org Publicly available archives are available here: https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/
