[Elecraft] Unhook *ALL* connections before Lightning storm

[Don Wilhelm]

The alternative to disconnecting everything is to design your ham 
station to tolerate lightning events.
There was a very good 3 part series in QST for June, July and August of 
2002 that dealt with the design of a station for lightning protection.  
Those articles are available at 
http://www.arrl.org/lightning-protection.  I highly recommend it.

Some of the "ground rules" given in the article:
All towers and masts grounded with buried radial wires and ground rods 
to spread the impact of a strike over a large area of the earth.
Perimeter ground wires around any building with a driven ground rod at 
each place the wire changes direction. (lightning likes to travel in a 
straight line).
Bring all services into the ham shack through a common grounded copper 
panel fitted with suppression devices - that includes feedlines, power, 
CAT5 cables, phone cables, and everything else.
Keep any equipment or devices that are not powered/connected through the 
above panel out of reach of the operating position.

There is no guarantee that the above steps will eliminate failures due 
to lightning, but it will go a long way toward achieving that goal.  The 
real goal is to keep *everything* in the shack at the same potential 
during a lightning event.

I have attempted to use those guidelines in the construction of my shack 
and antenna field.  All my feedlines are automatically grounded when the 
station is turned off, and I do not attempt to operate when there is 
lightning nearby - and I get stay out of the shack during storms.
We had a lightning event here last year that took out the Ethernet 
router, several switches, 3 computers and 2 network attached printers.  
None of the ham gear was damaged.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 7/15/2014 7:12 AM, Brian Alsop wrote:
> This sounds like good advice.  However, every connector socket on my 
> K3 is populated, ditto the computer, ditto the KPA500, ditto the KAT500.
>
> Pulling all wires when there is a potential storm threat is totally 
> impractical.  Even if I did, I'm sure some of the connectors would 
> simply not last.
>
> I suspect others have similar situations.
>
> 73 de Brian/K3KO
>
> n 7/15/2014 10:58, Bill Blomgren (kk4qdz) via Elecraft wrote:
>>   And another warning: Nearby (like next door) lightning will be 
>> picked up by ANY long wires which end up acting as antennas.
>>