[Elecraft] [OT] A dumb question about lightning

[Alan Bloom]

Hi Al,

The "Bible" on this subject that has been used for many years by the 
telecommunications industry is Motorola's "R56, Standards and Guidelines 
for Communications Sites":

https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/Lands_ROW_Motorola_R56_2005_manual.pdf

It's kind of complicated, but it's what you have to do if you really 
want to protect your site.  Of special interest are Chapter 4 "External 
Grounding (Earthing)", Chapter 5 "Internal Grounding (Earthing)", and 
Chapter 7 "Surge Protective Devices".

Alan N1AL


On 7/28/2023 10:31 PM, Al Lorona 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
>
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