On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:51:49 -0600, Cecil Moore
wrote:

Andy Cowley wrote:
All good stuff, Cecil, but I'd say that was lightening avoidance
not protection. I still don't believe there is an effective method
of lightening protection for an amateur station that will accept a
direct strike and survive. Even your method would probably result
in a fried antenna ;-) Hope you never find out!

I've been back in Texas for about 5 years now and the only thing
that has gotten fried was a five-foot-tall live oak tree, the
shortest thing around. Go figure. It's still struggling to stay
alive with half its branches dead and a burn mark down the trunk.

My system gets hit about 3 times a year. So far I've only lost the
front end out of a 2-meter rig and some coax. Since installing the
new tower I've not lost any radio gear, but I did get one computer
fried.

http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower.htm
shows the tower and antennas, but not the ground system.

There are currently 30, 8' ground rods and over 600 feet of bare #2
copper tying the whole works together.

Unfortunately we had to have some septic work done. When digging out
the tank they hooked the ground system. Pulled out a section of the
basement wall and cracked a whole bunch of it. The wall is
temporarily repaired, but we are going to have to replace the entire
wall this coming season.


IF you have a fast connection the view from the top of the tower
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower.htm panorama.
It's over 19 megs and would take forever on dial up.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair?)
www.rogerhalstead.com
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