[FADCA] (no subject)

[W4RP]

I'll tell you what happened here.
Last Friday, 6/11  at 15:47  I got my first direct lightening strike.

It struck my Comet GP-9 dual band vertical.   The GP-9 is 15.9 feet tall.
Mine was on a 50foot push up mast.

The bolt 'vaporized' the antenna.  Actually, it defined for me the word
'smithereens';  pieces of antenna are all over the street, yard, neighbors
roofs, etc.  All that remains is the ground plane and a little blackened
stub about 2 inches tall.

I have been paranoid about lightening for years and had invested heavily in
lightening protection.  At the base of the mast, I sunk a 10foot copper rod
through the pool deck into the ground and secured it to the mast with 000
braid. 

The ground rod also has a 000 braid looping up over the window behind it
into my shack where it terminates on a 1inch thick, 2 foot copper bar, which
in turn is mounted on a copper plate.   

I have 6 polyphaser lightening gas discharge lightening protectors for each
antenna.

Inside the shack, I have everything connected to APC power UPS with
surge/lightening protection.   The same for all computers in the kids rooms,
all TVs, and even my 5Ghz wireless local loop telephone system has its own
APC.

They all worked.  

The antenna was connected at the time of the strike, to my Kenwood TMV-7A
dual-band radio. The radio survived, and still works.

What I failed to protect was the bellsouth DSL line.   In trying to squeeze
every last bps out of it, I had run a Cat-5 cable from the NID on the side
of the house to my shack, where the dsl modem was.   At the NID, I had a DSL
line filter to separate the phone signal into the house and the DSL into the
shack.   

It had no protection.

What I figured happened was the current dutifully ran down the antenna mast
and into the ground rod like I wanted it to do.

Unfortunately, I ran the Cat-5 along the roof (2 storey house) and down the
pole into my 1st floor shack.

The EMP induced a heck-of-a pulsed current into the Cat-5.   Everything
attached to the DSL line was smoked.  Literally.   The DSL modem, the
router, the 16 port 10/100 3com hub  had smoke coming from it.

The RJ-45 connectors are black and melted.   All computers attached to the
hub were completely destroyed: my 'main' 3.0 GHZ 1 gig ram baby,  the
www.palmbayweather.com  computer, the packet BBS computer, the house file
server, etc., along with the hard drives, the LCD monitors, etc., etc.

I protected the 'front door' with the APC's, but not the DSL back door.

I also lost all the security/web cams  (5 b/w starlights, 5 color), 2
PK-232s,  the USB-rs-232 hub, and a whole PILE of other stuff in the shack,
including my entire weather station which made up the www.palmbayweather.com
site.

The whole radio room smoked.

Well that was fun.

Been there done that.  On to bigger and better things.

Next time, the DSL gets protected.


So for the mean time, the palm bay packet bbs is down, the w4rp digi is off
the air and the neighbors are consulting lawyers ( it took out there
computes, tvs and phones too).

Palmbayweather.com  is down, but not out -- new station is on the way and
should be back on the air this weekend.


73 es cul

De rick  w4rp



-----Original Message-----
From: fadca-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:fadca-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Bill Sinbine
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 9:36 PM
To: Florida Amateur Digital Communication Association
Subject: RE: [FADCA] (no subject)

At 08:08 AM 6/16/2004, you wrote:
>Bill Guthrie wrote:
> > test...is it working?
> > _______________________________________________
> > FADCA mailing list
> > FADCA at mailman.qth.net
> > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/fadca
>
>Yep, just a bit dead right now.
>
>Chuck Hast

Well lets get something going to talk about.....It HAS been kind of dead 
around here!!!

Let's see WHO is doing WHAT?????

I know, is there any update from the "EOC" guys about us getting on the EOC 
network on whatever system it was?


Think about it .....
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Bill Sinbine
n4xeo at bellsouth.net 

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