Richard; You had offered the following: > I have alligator clips on the ends of my ladder-line so that I can easily connect them > to a ground lead when finished operating. I would get bit doing this at times, so I put > a 1 MegOhm resistor from each twin lead tap on the tuner to ground. No trouble since. > Perhaps I should reduce the R value though. > Some guys use spark plugs to bleed off, but I feel that allows too much voltage at the point of dis-charge.
I suggest that you attach the alligator clips to your GROUNDED wires, not the antenna. (Safety is the thought, here.) One meg of resistance as a bleeder is a good thought, but might be "plenty high." (Consider a value closer to a quarter-meg, per what I recall reading.) I agree that the spark-plug is basically a good thought, but is this gap is jumped, the receiver may well have suffered damage at that point. Not a total protection situation! If one uses a balun, the antenna (considering balanced line) is grounded as a result of the balun's DC continuity. This seems to satisfy a lot of needs... It may be that SOME baluns do not offer a DC path to the coax, but mine do. 73; -Mike- KØJTA ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
