I lived in a VERY high lightning strike area and had two direct hits on my
antennas and several nearby ones.

There is no protection against a direct strike - it's going to blow all
your radio gear and the entire house, even blew my water mains as I had
earthed the antenna with a heavy copper strap to the copper water pipes.

Powerful nearby strikes just "jump" the gas protectors as the spark
generated can be several inches long.

What I learnt through hard experience was:
DON'T
1). have your antennas higher than surrounding rooftops and trees - all you
will be doing is attract the lightning.
2). put a heavy earth strap on your antenna - it just provides a perfect
path for the lightning to ground.

You do have to ground your antenna's to bleed off static and provide a
"radio" earth to your antenna's, but this ground lead should be as thin as
possible, then it doesn't attract the lightning and acts as a fusible link
in the case of a nearby strike.
--
John Plimmer, Montagu, Western Cape Province, South Africa
South 33 d 47 m 32 s, East 20 d 07 m 32 s
RX Icom IC-756 PRO III with MW mods
Drake SW8 & ERGO software
Sony 7600D GE SRIII
BW XCR 30, Braun T1000, Sangean 818 & 803A.
GE circa 50's radiogram
Antenna's RF Systems DX 1 Pro, Datong AD-270
Kiwa MW Loop
http://www.dxing.info/about/dxers/plimmer.dx

"Robert11" wrote in message
. ..
Hi,

Have an attic located, receiving only, random length antenna.

Thinking of stringing one outdoors, but have a few questions, and
concerns, regarding nearby lightning.

a. would you folks agree that having it indoors under the house roof,
probably provides 0.0 % added protection relative to if it was outdoors ?
That any additional indoor protection due to being indoors is probably
more psychological than anything else ?

b. We gets lots of lighning strikes around here. Happy to say that they
have all been "nearby".
This is the crux of what concerns me.

I can't help but feel that if there ever was a truly direct strike on the
wire running (horizontally) outdoors,
a gas discharge tube protector like the Alpha-Delta ones wouldn't really
help much.

But, for the nearby strikes, where possibly just a few hundred volts
perhaps is induced into the wire (but enough to fry the radios front end),
would the Alpha Delta types even trigger ?

c. what's the best protection for "nearby" strikes, other than a total
disconnect ?

BTW: would grounding of the wire be equally effective as a total
disconnect of it ?

Thanks,
Bob