Does no one care about lightning?
Hi all,
I posted a reply to a thread about lightning protection. I conclude that one of the following is correct.
1. I said it so well that there was nothing left to say.
2. I said it so poorly that it wasn't worthy of a response.
3. No one cares.
4. We will all miss you when you are gone.
I don't claim to be an expert on this, but it really amazed me that no one chipped in with their $.02.
Is anyone reading posts on this board?
Neil
I thought you did a really good job covering the topic.
Maybe everyone is focused on getting them working first.. 😀
Thaks for your replies. I was afraid that folks were not concerned about this.
Neil
I actually am not to concerned about it.. I have a electrical pole 20 feet from my antenna that is 25 foot high and trees on both sides of my place that are 50+ foot high... So the odds are very low that my antenna gets hit... if it does i gues im out a TX and need to rebuild my antenna.. but with all that other stuff near my antenna odds are very low.. HEck my Antenna is lower than my house..
We had one of those 50 foot pines struck by lightning this year, bark was found 500 feet away.. just boiled the sap and traveled down the tree blowing the bark and about a inch of wood off of the tree as the lightning fallowed its way down the tree to ground.... Very impressive... OH if we could only figure out how to store all that energy and use it for powering our towns and cities...
Hi Jason,
Glad you are not concerned about lightning, but I think you should give it some thought.
You do not need a direct hit to suffer damage. The tremendous energy of a strike induces current in things near the strike. There is also a very high voltage gradient produced in the soil (such as 20,000 volts/meter). I have seen cattle in the field killed while the farmer standing with them was not harmed. Know why? Hint: two legs vs four.
If your pole were hit, you still would be exposed.
Lightning does not always strike the tallest or most conductive object in an area. I have read about a "cone of protection" around tall objects, but I have personally witnessed a strike to a sidewalk which was next to a house and trees. I also remember when I was young, sitting on the livingroom floor watching television when, during a storm, an orange plasma lightning fireball came out of the wall (crank type) telephone, bounced across the floor, and hit the TV with a loud pop. The phone and TV were damaged.
There is no need to obsess over this but I would give some thought to protection where your station wires enter your house.
Neil
the wires going into the house ... forgot about them.. SO how do you protect your self from this..
Jason
Hi Jason,
Check out Techpuppy's post in the Lightning thread. He has a very interesting approach.
You might also look for lightning arresters. These devices connect to the wires and to the electrical service entrance ground. They are available for coax and other wire types. Some are quite sophisticated and expensive with gas discharge tubes, and some are cheap using spark gaps. I use the spark gap type. (Me......cheap?). They work for me.
To make $$$ when I was in HS, I installed rooftop TV antennas. Believe it or not, TV was rather new then and there was a good market. I always used lightning arresters that pierced the twin lead and made sure they and the masts were grounded. I never had a report of lightning damage from any of my customers.
Neil