[Lowfer] Re: Lightning/ESD problem, question

[harry]

Kurt,

Much or all of this stuff you probably know, but it never hurts to put it out for those who haven't found out about it yet.

About noise...
One thing I can tell you is to make sure anything you put up is properly connected and grounded. Tower sections insulated from each other by paint, rain gutters or roof peak or edge flashing on the house not soldered together, fence wire joints that are corroded and not making good connection all will make horrific static noise when a tiny spark jumps over the tiny gap.  Any piece of metal is a possible culprit. A tin roof without each piece connected together or having a good path to ground can make a amazing racket.

Also, with corrosion oxides in a joint you can actually get a diode action which will allow signals to mix with each other producing sum and difference frequencies all over the place.

I often have lots of wind out here and have to go hunt up spark paths from time to time. A sixty foot dipole often will arc across at the connector end in the shack if its not plugged into a receiver which will make a horrible tick tick tick that varies with wind speed and I expect radiates pretty far. I think some of the little screaming static noises I hear sometimes in a wind storm or on a cloudy day when the air is highly charged are lengths of neighbors barb wire fence arcing to each other or ground.

I've had a couple of receivers over the years that didn't give a dc path to ground for my antennas that gave me trouble with noise till I did something about it. 

House wiring with open safety grounds or transformer power supplies that don't give a dc path to ground on their outputs all can contribute to the problem. Most wall wart power supplies and many commercial supplies have no path to ground so its important to give the receiver or transmitter chassis a good path to ground. Check it with an ohm meter.

Wish I could tell you whether the spikes you ask about will increase or decrease noise. I don't know. 

Harry
WB0BTY