[Elecraft] Lightening damage

[Fred Jensen]

I supported myself at university as an engineer at the only TV station 
in town.  Transmitters [10 KW visual, 5 KW aural] and studio were in a 
building at the base of a 400' tower on a ridge overlooking town.  
Studio wiring was in trenches in the concrete floor covered with fairly 
heavy steel plates.  As Mark mentioned, our tower did get hit 
occasionally, but it was not a common lightning area.  It knocked one or 
both transmitters off the air once or twice, sometimes it didn't.  Did 
not seem to bother the uwave antennas or equipment.  What it did do in 
the control room, every time, is sound like you were inside a big bell 
as all those trench covers rang. [:-)

73,

Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 11/7/2017 9:26 AM, Mark Bayern wrote:
> My experience as a 1st Phone running AM broadcast stations is that the
> towers _are_ hit by lightning. This was in the early '70s and all base
> insulated towers had a lightening arrestor across the insulator.
> Normally the transmitter would drop out momentarily. Most of the
> stations had two 833s for the the finals. Guess they can handle some
> abuse.
>
> Once I lost a selenium rectifier but that was most likely a power line hit ...
>
> Mark AD5SS
>