[Antennas] Lightning protection

[TonyG70747@aol.com]

Had a Kenwood 930 hooked to a Quad during a direct strike on the antenna. It 
opened two wires on the quad, blew open the remote switching switch contacts, 
took out a computer printer board and a phone answering machine but the 
Kenwood Ok.
      A year later I had the Kenwood open for mods and noticed it had a glass 
encapsulated gap protection device installed directly to the coax antenna 
input and a sturdy solder to the chasis. It was discolored as if it had 
evaporated metal (blown) son the inside.
Maybe it was dumb luck, as the antenna didn't have ligtning protection, but 
it shows that these gap devices are effective
      A recent show and tell by a commercial lightning protection company 
suggested that a severe bend in the coax does adds some inductance so the bend 
can produce a significantly higher voltage than the following wire to ground. 
They had a lot impressive hardware that makes my current efforts seem puny.
Their website is at www.harger.com. They were giving away free CDs that had a 
lot of info on commercial style techniques and should be informative to any 
ham.

Tony K6AIA




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