[Boatanchors] Storm Damage to Electronics

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Hi Don,

One thing is for certain. There are as many answers as there are questions 
when it comes to 'ground' systems!

I was told by one commercial antenna specialist who works on commercial 
AM/FM radio station antenna arrays that the better the path to ground, the 
greater the probability of a lightning strike. After all, lightning has a 
habit of taking the shortest path to ground.

I had a lightning strike eight years here at my QTH. It struck a tree right 
on the property line. Then jumped to my GAP Titan which is ground mounted. 
It had an eight foot Copper ground rod connected to the base of the antenna 
via 8 gauge braided wire.

The lightning vaporized the ground wire and ground rod! It then traveled to 
the double female PL-259 connector that joins the special factory GAP Titan 
coax to your coax. That connector got burned badly!

Now after doing all of that, the lightning stopped and did not continue into 
the seventy-five feet of 9913F coax!

Instead the lightning went into the ground (as in soil) and then surfaced 
sixty feet away in my twin 8 foot Copper ground rod system for the R-25G 
tower! It came into the house via the 10 gauge ground wire. Since I had 
disconnected all the antennas and jumpers from antenna switches from all 
radios, set all of the heavy duty MFJ 1704 four way antenna switches to 
ground, put Poly Phasers on the open ends of all coax lines, disconnected 
all heavy duty six outlet power strips with twin circuit breakers from the 
wall outlets etc. I thought that my equipment and I were reasonably safe.

Wrong!

The lightning came through the ground wires running from the equipment to 
the solid Copper station ground buss. Which was still attached to the 
outside twin ground rods! The result was over $12,000 in damages!

It never occurred to me at the time that lightning might jump from my 
outside ground rod into the soil, travel through the soil and surface in a 
pair of ground rods sixty feet away and then come into the shack. But it 
sure did!

My answer to the best way to protect yourself and your station from 
lightning: Don't be there when an electrical storm is!

Duane, W8DBF

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <k8omo at juno.com>
To: <ronhunsi at ptd.net>
Cc: <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2011 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Storm Damage to Electronics


> one electrician told me not to connect the
> ground  on my well pump motor which is 220 volts
> because it would attract lightening  and also if the
> neutral got disconnected it may blow up my
> pump motor  . is this right
>
> Don  in Ohio
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