[Kenwood] Lightning protection wire antennas WA8OPR

[Fern]

    A few years ago, both of my next door neighbours got hit badly with lightning and it blew all of their electronics in both houses. The one neighbour actually saw that flash coming down his ac mains drop. 
I never lost a single thing in my house. I attribute this to the fact that I have a free standing tower that's 96 ft tall and is well grounded. I have a TH11DXX on top plus a 2 meter yagi that's vertically polarized sitting above all that. Now all of my feed lines come underground to the house which is about 100 ft away.
I have never disconnected any feedlines and have never have any issues with lightning damage.
I suspect that my well grounded tower had something to do with this.
73 from Fern   VE7GZ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenneth G. Gordon" <kgordon2006 at frontier.com>
To: <kenwood at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Kenwood] Lightning protection wire antennas WA8OPR


> On 14 May 2014 at 14:39, Fred wrote:
> 
>> > I would reiterate the ARRL '75 Antenna Handbook, along with numerous 
>> > editions of the "West Coast" Handbook, both - have a methodology of 
>> > pointed elements outside, with a gap, significantly smaller than the 
>> > 2.5" that use heavy copper to have the lightning jump the much smaller 
>> > gap to the piece that is grounded.
> 
> If you would re-read that article very carefully, you will find that the purpose of 
> such a spark-plug device is to leak off static build-up on the antenna, and 
> only secondarily is its purpose to help with lightning strokes.
> 
> If you have lived in any area where the wind causes either dust storms or 
> blowing snow, you will soon find out that those can cause the build-up of 
> tremendous static voltages on any antenna. That voltage easily reaches well 
> over 100K volts in very short order. I have experienced that many times.
> 
> The spark-plug or spark-gap devices are specifically meant to drain those 
> voltages before they can damage any component in the receiver or 
> transmitter.
> 
> In point of fact, an RF choke between each antenna lead and ground would 
> work better, IMHO.
> 
> Ken W7EKB
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