Moving to the beach later this summer, and would like to get my Rangemaster up and running ASAP, natch. I've been pretty lazy with grounding and lightning protection up to this point, but should I be more diligent with install (and maybe something like a lightning arrester) right on the coast?
Now that I'm thinking about it, is salt air going to be rough on the antenna in general?
If there are lightning storms in the area you're moving to, then lightning protection is always a concern.
I live in an area where such storms are rare. I also am close to the Pacific Ocean and walt water tidal rivers. My AM install was about 2 feet from ground level, with a semi-decent ground to a pipe driven into the Earth. On a flood plain, so ground conductivity was excellent. If there ever was a forecasted storm, and things got hairy, I just disconnected everything running inside.
One of my installs was on an island surrounded by salt water. I had no issues with antenna corrosion after 2 years of operating 24/7 outside. My biggest issue was condensation inside the waterproof transmitter case. I never had any failures, however.
Some kind of vacuum tube (I forget Keith called it but seems it was vacuum-something) - whatever the component is called, it blew out in my transmitter and I sent it back to Keith for repair and had it back in perfect working order within days.
The Rangemaster didn't actually receive a strike, it was a build up of atmospheric static (if I understand correctly), most likely caused by the fact I was using the city's pier and pavilions grounding system as my ground.
But other than that I've not experienced any kind of issues with grounding in coastal areas.
@richpowers You mean the little surge arrester for static protection like
this
How do you know whether it is working or not? The Procaster has that too.
@mark Mark I suppose that's it, I have no clue, never knew. What happened is all of the sudden one day my range dropped to almost nothing, had to actually be within like 100ft to receive anything, and even then it just sounded weak. I emailed Keith and he told me to send it to him, which I did and in the next couple days he told me it was nothing, just that component had blown probably due to a buildup of eltrostactic during a storm.
Anyway, he fixed it and never had a problem with it again - although I never installed to the peir grounding system again either)
All I can say is that you WILL KNOW If blows, your range will die entirely