You were luck. It's always best to disconnect any long wires from
equipment during electrical storms. I've seen the backs of TV sets
blown off.

Rely on the Varactors and gas dealies as insurance for when a storm
hits and you're not home. Otherwise, unplug and ground.

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 15:30:22 GMT, "Burr" wrote:

Lighting tore us up yesterday afternoon, most of the south part of town was
with out power a few hours and I was out 12 hours.

I took a hit on my transformer on the pole, blew it apart. Nothing
happened to my radios or computers. I have my computers on a UPS so I had
lots of time to shut down gracefully. My radios run on large 12v batteries
so they came out ok, my antennas are grounded and one coil did drop and I
had to replace it this morning.

So it worked. Who would have thought that "I" would get hit out of all
the houses and antennas around here. I went through the motions of grounding
but thinking I would never need it. I use UPS's on my computers, TV and CD
players because of "brown outs". I run my radios on 12v batteries to get
away from the AC hum and normally recharge when I go to bed.

At the time I got hit I had two PC laptops going and one "Big Mac", the
Sat 800 and the BC 895. I ran the radios from 5:30am until I went to bed, I
have two of the biggest batteries that Cosco has, I replaced the D50's that
I used for years and used the Cosco batteries because of price.

When the power came on about 4am I got up and checked to be sure
everything was charging then went back to bed. Something to remember, UPS's
are only good for 2 years. I sell a UPS with every system I install and I
always push for them to change them out in two years. I have also found it
is good to "work" the batteries, I pull the ones down in my motor home every
few months, I "recharge" my car batteries every few months to keep them
toped off, alternators do not top batteries off, they only replace what is
used, """Maybe"""!!!!

OK, here's my report on the power outages. Pick it apart if you want but
it works.