Here's something similar Cecil:

I drove at 65 mph through a limited (about 1 mile wide) wind driven dust
storm from an Iowa corn field during a drought. I was watching my S-meter on
a 2m radio at the time (in the car). It slowly built up and eventually
pinned (simultaneously, AM radio stations suffered the static build up and
were blotted out. By the time I got through the mini-dust storm, the PIN
diode antenna switching in the 2m radio had been destroyed. It was not
raining. It was hot and dry, and you can imagine the dust particle count.

I don't know the mechanics (as you people are disputing), but there was no
doubt a significant build up and eventual discharge (I heard it on the AM
radio) and the dust in the wind (thankyou Kansas), caused it, IMO.

Another idiosyncratic report:

40m dipole up 30'. Middle of winter, very heavy wet snow.

I could draw an arc off the end of the coax connector about an inch long.
The rate of build/up and then discharge (how long it took between SNAPS)
correlated very nicely with the rate of snowfall. The harder it snowed, the
more rapidly the arc would happen, the more slowly it snowed, the longer in
between arcing from the connector.

Both of these, I would call "precip static"...one was dust, the other was
snow. I'll leave it to you guys to figure out the mechanism.

73,

....hasan, N0AN
"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
. com...
wrote:
I must have missed it.

:-) Sure you did even after I said it half a dozen times. :-)
You have talked about my transmission line laying on the
rug scorching it so you could not possibly have "missed it".

With any AURAL noise there is always a spark, and
that spark is accompanied by electrical noise or component damage.

Yes, I have said *many* times that my transceiver's power was
off and it was unplugged from the transmission line. You know
the transmission line was laying on my rug because you have
talked about that before.

My understanding was you said the HF noise in the receiver was caused
by the random particles actually striking the antenna. If so, grounding
makes no difference.

I agree and never said otherwise. However, since you
insist, below I indicate how grounding would have made
a difference had I responded in a different way.

If you disagree, explain why.

Let's say that I was stupid enough not to disconnect my
transceiver when I heard the arcing at the coax input and
instead turned the transceiver on. Let's say it didn't
suffer failure.

Would you agree that I would hear RF noise in the transceiver
every time the coax connector arced?

Would you agree that if I shorted the center conductor to
ground that since the outer conductor was already grounded,
the RF noise in the transceiver would decrease?

Why not act mature?

It was you who once again regressed to your terrible-twos
infantile omniscient stage and just couldn't resist
misquoting me. Please don't do that again.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp