[Elecraft] A dumb question about lightning

[Bob McGraw]

No such thing as a dumb question about lightning.  I spent 15 years in 
South Florida.  I've seen some lightning!  Welcome to KY.  I'm in  
middle TN and do understand lightning.


The ARRL publication by Ward Silver, Grounding and Bonding for the 
Amateur, is about the best compilation available and understandable.

Three points I consider as mandatory:

(A)  All efforts for lightning protection should be implemented outside 
of the house.  Never inside.

(B)  All driven station and tower ground rods must be bonded together 
and back to the AC Mains ground outside of the structure.

(C)  Each piece of equipment should be bonded to a common point such as 
the station power supply , using dedicated bonding jumpers.

All efforts are toward mitigation of lightning damage.

73

Bob, K4TAX


On 7/28/2023 4:14 PM, elecraft-request at mailman.qth.net wrote:
> Message: 19
> From: Al Lorona<alorona at sbcglobal.net>
> To: Elecraft Reflector<elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject:  A dumb question about lightning
>
> 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
>
>