[Hallicrafters] ANTENNAS and OLD WIVES' TALES

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

Bill - 

It sounds more like a multi-purpose fix: balun and lightning
protection perhaps?

It is true that lightning does not like abrupt bends in wire and will
generally exit and find its way to ground. It's also common practice
to make a few turns of coax (last time I saw it done a piece of large
PVC pipe was used as a form) right near the feedpoint of a Yagi or
other systems as a simple form of impedance matching. I have no clue
why you'd need to wind another coil where the feedling enters the
building, but a single turn would give the lightning an additional
exit point and probably wouldn't change things much with respect to
the antenna, provided you are using well-shielded coax.

de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ


On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:00:44 -0500, Mr. and Mrs. Magoo <magoo at isp.ca> wrote:
> While we are on the subject of "old wives' tales" and ham folklore about
> antennas, when I first became involved in the 2-way radio business back in
> the 70s an "old hand" told me that when installing a base antenna place a
> coil of about 5-7 turns of coax diameter about 8 inches or so just below the
> connector on the antenna and affix securely to the tower.