[Elecraft] To ground or not to ground

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Don makes an excellent point. And a really cheap and effective way to do it
is to put a resistor from each antenna "hot" side to ground. For a 50-ohm
transmission, 500 to 1000 ohms is fine. That will bleed off any charge
building up on the antenna but will be too high of a value to affect the
operation of the antenna. 

Ron AC7AC

-----Original Message-----

Clint,

Not OT at all.  Many remote antenna switches do it "the easy way", and 
use SPST relays to switch in the selected antenna - there is no way with 
that type relay to ground the antennas that are not currently selected.

So yes, some type of static discharge device would be beneficial across 
each antenna connector to bleed off static.  Usually a 100 uHy choke (of 
sufficient current capacity for your power level) or a 2 or 3 watt 
carbon resistor in the range of 3000 to 30,000 ohms will provide the DC 
path to bleed off any static charge.

Imagine your antenna with a static charge - then you select that antenna 
- suddenly your transceiver is subjected to whatever charge was on the 
antenna.  Sometimes OK, but other times, not so good.

73,
Don W3FPR