[Elecraft] Lighting

[Fred Jensen]

While we're on the subject of huge amounts of static electricity, I've 
posted this before but it is important [see text]:  Precipitation static 
... rain, snow, and even dust ... can kill your radio, and it will do it 
with no rumble, flashes, sparks, and crashes.  On the panadapter, it 
will look like very low grass on the baseline.  In the cans, it may 
sound like very faint "frying" or may not sound at all.  Each flake, 
drop, or dust particle carries a minuscule charge which it deposits on 
the antenna.  However, there are gazillions of them.  Most front ends 
these days have an FET as the first stage, and the gate acts like a tiny 
capacitor, charged incrementally by each little minuscule charge coming 
down the coax. Eventually, if the precip lasts long enough, the gate 
will charge to the failure point.  You won't see or hear it coming but 
you can discern this when you suddenly don't hear anything.

Some current transceivers have a bleed across the antenna jack [100K-ish 
resistor or maybe an RF choke].  I "believe" Elecraft rigs do, but I've 
never checked.  Years ago, at the dawn of the transistor age, I learned 
to wire a PL259 with a 100K 1/2 W resistor shorting it, put a coax Tee 
on the antenna jack, connect the antenna to one arm, and put the PL259 
on the other.

Back around 2010 or so, four of us were activating Alpine County CA 
during the CQP.  We were at about 8,500 ft AMSL, and it began to snow 
[of course, with wind too].  Barely perceptible grass on the 
ICOM<mumble> panadapter.  Suddenly, it got very quiet.  So we replaced 
it with the spare, and it met the same fate.

73,

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

PS The combined longevity of the 4 of us in ham radio was something 
around 200 years.  You'd have thought one of us would have remembered.

Gene Robinson wrote on 8/24/2022 1:54 PM:
> Working at Collins in the 60’s we had a lab with no windows but we did have 18 foot vertical antennas on the roof.
> We would have NE2 neon bulbs connected to the RF coax feed lines and when thunderstorms were within 5 miles they would start to flash.
> We all then went out to the parking lot and rolled up our windows.
> The rain and lightning would arrive about 10 to 15 minutes latter.
> The break down and flash voltage for a NE2 is 90 volts! Keep those antennas disconnected when not in use.
> Gene N5LDX
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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