[Elecraft] [OT] A dumb question about lightning

[Al Lorona]

Please don't laugh at me; I'm a transplant from a region of the country with essentially no lightning to a region where you have to worry about it quite a bit.

We had a doozy of a storm last night, with lots of lightning overhead. I felt like a sitting duck, even though I had grounded both sides of the balanced feedline of the antenna, switched the antenna switch to the middle (grounded) position, and even disconnected the coax leading to the K3's rear-panel antenna port.

Whenever lightning happens, I always wonder if it really is in fact better to ground everything. Because, doesn't that essentially make a lightning rod of the antenna? If I simply disconnected the antenna and left it floating, wouldn't it be less likely to attract a lightning bolt?

I'm of the belief that it's better to try to avoid a direct hit than to attract one and trust your grounding system to do its thing. I'm of the belief that no grounding system is perfectly effective.

Al  W6LX/4