On a sunny day (Mon, 26 Sep 2005 19:41:07 -0400) it happened jim
wrote in :

all the work to set up a station and no lightning protection scheme?
there are many ways to protect the equipment including gas discharge
kit. any surge protection on the ac input?

mmm maybe the situation is different here.
And I do no see how I could make 100% lightning protection, neither
against EMP in case of a nuke attack.
As lighting is on average rather rare...
I found some diagrams of lightning detectors using google.
There seem to be basically 2 types, one with tuned antenna, and the other
with not tuned antenna.
The second would always trigger if anybody here in the area (I am
surrounded by CB fans) presses transmit....
So, last night I wound 500 turns of wire on an old ferrite rod,
tuned it with 100pF, then with 100nF.
I have this old helium neon laser supply, if you remove the laser
(it was kaput anyways), it makes great arcs.
Used oscilloscope to measure signals... and resonance of the ferrite
coil + cap.
So I can tune it from 3kHz to about 50 kHz.

Later I will look at what sort of pre-amp and pulse detector I will use,
it is small can go in a plastic box, and should trigger some beep
that alerts me.

That said, I left the little radio LW receiver I have on at about 163 kHz,
and feeding that into the PC for signal processing would also work.
So much for electronics.

Problem with lightning *protection* is (and I have worked with HV power
stuff) it will easily jump over whatever you make.. we used to play with 100kV
in the lab.... better to prevent it getting in the house in the first place
by disconnecting antennas.
My view anyways, cheap better solutions show me!
Those so called mains surge protectors you plug in the wall for the computer
are not worth the cost of box they come in.
I have one, opened it, it has 2 pins. some mm apart, that are supposed to
function as a spark gap.
In series with that is a VDR (voltage dependent resistor).
That crap will evaporate .... You will have several kV on ground and neutral
in case of a real hit....
And good thing, mains is here where I am all underground cable, so nothing
to worry about.
US is different I know, transformers with wiring on poles outside...
At most you can expect a power failure, when I run on gel battery I am free
of mains (but set is connected to PC for for example packet, voice control,
recording, headset... so once lightning DID make it on the mains it would
all evaporate).
I have seen TV PCBs (used to have a TV repair shop) with all tracks evaporated
because of lightning strike.
YMMV