[Elecraft] [OT] A dumb question about lightning

[john at kk9a.com]

I would recommend that you follow proper lightning bonding/grounding
techniques, these are the only methods that work. My tower has taken a
number of lighting strikes. You cannot prevent a lightning strike. Simply
disconnecting your feedling will not prevent damage inside your house as the
voltage from a strike will be induced into your home's electrical wires.

John KK9A


Al Lorona W6LX wrote:


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