I had the experience of a direct hit to my antenna. It was a 130 foot cage
fed with ladderline. Coax was used the last 20 feet to bring it into the
house.

Inside I had a TS-440, a TS-820 and an MFJ 989C.

The bolt destroyed the side of the antenna that went to the shield of the
coax, the largest remaining piece was about 3" in length with most of it
vaporized. The ladderline was vaporized, the other half of the dipole was
untouched.

The coax split open like a hotdog put in a microwave. The same stroke went
into the electric utilities and blew every electronic device in the house
except a cheap GE clock radio.

A stroke went through the wiring in the ceiling and the explosive expansion
of hot air blew all the vinyl siding off the front and one side of the
house.

The only fire damage was a small burn mark on the shack carpet where the
coax laid on the floor.

All antennas were grounded via the antenna switch and all ham gear was
unplugged. All antennas had blitzbuggs and coiled coax before entering the
house. These were tied to both RF ground and the single point electrical
ground.

What was strange was the stroke following paths along wood beams while
ignoring good conducting copper wires 3 feet away. The only damage to the
ham gear was a burn mark and heat distortion on the rear panel of the tuner.
It's operation was unaffected.



"chuck" wrote in message
ink.net...
Does anyone know of cases where houses have fried as a consequence of
ham wire antennas, "protected" or otherwise?

We all know of cases where electronics gets zapped but Jerry is
concerned about his house.

Be interesting to hear of actual cases, wouldn't it? Statistics would be
even better, but I won't hold my breath.

Chuck

Jerseyj wrote:
Hi all,
For years I lived in an apartment and just had antenna's in the attic ,
but now having moved to a house in a few months I'll be putting up a
10-160 wire type antenna in my trees. Given the recent spate of serious
thunderstorms, and the accompanying lightning, I'm a bit concerned about
properly grouding the antenna so that I don't fry the house *smile*. I
know about some articles on the ARRL site, but was wondering if anyone
else had some ideas or pointers on how to practically do this ?

Jerry