On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:03:59 +0100, "Thierry" To answer me in private
use http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/post.htm wrote:

Hi,

Was your house/shack stroken by Thor's hammer, I mean a lightning recently ?
I am interested in your experience...

The " system" gets hit about 3 times a year on average.
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower.htm

If your installaiton was damaged by a strike event, I would like to now if :

Rarely does the system suffer damage.

- you used a central ground point bonded to an external grounding system, as
well as the home ground.

The system uses a network, or grid of ground rods. 31 in the antenna
and radio system, plus 5 for the house electrical system. It's all
bonded together.

- you left some gears switched on during the strike event

Gears as in aircrafts ...
Queens English Vs US English = Gear and aircraft:-)) Over here
neither uses an s which is confusing to some.

- you left the TX switched on and the coaxial plugged without protection

Rarely is the gear disconnected and I don't remember the last time I
disconnected a coax due to storms.

- you installed or not lightning controllers in your electric distribution

I do not have any in the distribution panel.
I do have PolyPhasers for each coax mounted on a common bulkhead which
is tied to the ground system using bare #2 copper cable.

panel
- you had installed another protection
- you swicthed off and unplugged all devices

Never bother.

- you think that the energy came back via the grounding network (probably
dut to a difference of potential in a device)

I lost one computer due to a pulse coming in on the telephone line.
Nothing spectacular.

Tell me only in a few words what was the most probable cause of the
accident.

The one telephone cable was hot to ground with enough voltage to fry
the solid state components.


At last, if you master the subject, do you really think that a grounding
system, as best it could be as the advice provided by PolyPhaser for
example, will never protect you against a direct strike on your antenna or
on the house lightning conductor

I have 31 ground rods in the radio station ground system tied (cad
welded) to over 600 feet of bare copper cable within 2 inches of the
surface.

All antennas are grounded either due to design, or a balun.

The devices appear to work as advertised.

Why ?

I've lost one PolyPhaser with no damage to the rig that was hooked to
it. (Kenwood TM-V7A)

I had one lightening strike destroy a repeater antenna, blow out a
section of 5/8ths inch Heliax about 30 feet down from the antenna, as
well as blow off every bit of water proofing and all the silver
plating from every coax connector at the top of the tower. The only
damage was the input transistor in a two meter rig which was not the
rig connected to the antenna that was hit. That rig was not protected
by a PolyPhaser.

Lightening and the results of a strike are unpredictable, but with the
repeated strikes here, experience has shown me that apparently the
PolyPhasers do their job in a well designed system.

Last Summer I had a barrel connector (N type) short out in the coax
from one of the 75 meter slopers to the tower mounted antenna
selector. I'm assuming it was probably a near by strike, but I have no
way of knowing for sure.

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

All this will help me to conclude the article dealing with this matter :
http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/qsl-...protection.htm

Thanks in advance

NB. Answer preferably through these forums to please everybody.

Thierry
ON4SKY

Roger Halstead wrote:
The " system" gets hit about 3 times a year on average.
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower.htm

Interesting site. However the links to your larger pictures are all broken.
They refer to files on your local PC eg:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator.ROGER2.000/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/ham_files/tower8.htm

--
73 Laurie - G6ISY

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 19:48:06 -0000, "Laurie"
wrote:

Roger Halstead wrote:
The " system" gets hit about 3 times a year on average.
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower.htm

Interesting site. However the links to your larger pictures are all broken.
They refer to files on your local PC eg:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator.ROGER2.000/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/ham_files/tower8.htm

Thanks for telling me.

I uploaded some frames for the local EAA Chapter and apparently "Front
Page" in its infuriating propensity to change everything to it's way
of thinking "did it to me" again.

FP is great to work with "at times", but it uses sloppy and bloated
code you don't need. And... If you forget it'll upload files other
than what you planned. Down load 'em and then re upload them and you
will find them reconfigured.

sigh Back to fixing links. (I wonder what else may have been
broken) I have nearly 60 megs on those pages.

Again, thanks,

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

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 19:48:06 -0000, "Laurie"
wrote:

Roger Halstead wrote:
The " system" gets hit about 3 times a year on average.
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower.htm

Interesting site. However the links to your larger pictures are all broken.
They refer to files on your local PC eg:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator.ROGER2.000/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/ham_files/tower8.htm

sigh It wasn't as bad as I feared, but not as good as I hoped.:-))

Having a backup, I turned off the FP extensions on the server,
up-loaded the tower.htm file using ftp and then went through it image
by image.
One directory missing, 4 files missing (htms) and one bad link.
and one image. I have no idea as to where it put that image which is
supposed to be in a sub directory one level down from ham_files which
is one level down from the root.

All-in-all, about 20 minutes to fix including the wait for FP to
reconfigure.

That utility can be great for some things and a royal pain for others.

At least the frames still work.
OTOH when I get the interactive *stuff* going I won't be able to turn
them off.

Again, thanks for letting me know about the broken links.

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

Roger Halstead wrote:
sigh It wasn't as bad as I feared, but not as good as I hoped.:-))
[snip]

All-in-all, about 20 minutes to fix including the wait for FP to
reconfigure.
That utility can be great for some things and a royal pain for others.


I've got the same FP 't-shirt' :-)


Again, thanks for letting me know about the broken links.


You're welcome, all seems fine now.
You have a much better head for heights than I have.

--
73 Laurie - G6ISY

"Roger Halstead"
Rarely does the system suffer damage.

...one computer...
...one PolyPhaser...
...a repeater antenna...
...a section of 5/8ths inch Heliax...
...every bit of water proofing...
...all the silver plating...
...a two meter rig...
...a barrel connector (N type)...

Geesus H. !

I guess so long as you think that you're happy,
then you're happy. ;-)

Carry on then.

"J. Harvey" wrote in message
m...
"Roger Halstead"
Rarely does the system suffer damage.

...one computer...
...one PolyPhaser...
...a repeater antenna...
...a section of 5/8ths inch Heliax...
...every bit of water proofing...
...all the silver plating...
...a two meter rig...
...a barrel connector (N type)...

Geesus H. !

I saw the result of a lightening strike at Barkway on Royston Heath.
The lightening came down our waveguide without any damage but inside teh
equipemy huit it vapourised teh big circuit breaker on teh wall and left a
hole wher it had been and chared melted wires some distance above and below
wher the box had been mounted.



I guess so long as you think that you're happy,
then you're happy. ;-)

cogito ergo sum

Only some 3,000 years earlier.

Gary7SLL

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:29:19 +0000 (UTC), "Gary Peach"
wrote:


"J. Harvey" wrote in message
om...
"Roger Halstead"
Rarely does the system suffer damage.

...one computer...
...one PolyPhaser...
...a repeater antenna...
...a section of 5/8ths inch Heliax...
...every bit of water proofing...
...all the silver plating...
...a two meter rig...
...a barrel connector (N type)...

Geesus H. !

I saw the result of a lightening strike at Barkway on Royston Heath.
The lightening came down our waveguide without any damage but inside teh
equipemy huit it vapourised teh big circuit breaker on teh wall and left a
hole wher it had been and chared melted wires some distance above and below
wher the box had been mounted.

Can't think of a better place for "lightening" to strike than Barkway.

I kate it you where in eht RAF hewn all this happened?

--
Jock.

"Jock" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:29:19 +0000 (UTC), "Gary Peach"

wrote:


"J. Harvey" wrote in message
om...
"Roger Halstead"
Rarely does the system suffer damage.

...one computer...
...one PolyPhaser...
...a repeater antenna...
...a section of 5/8ths inch Heliax...
...every bit of water proofing...
...all the silver plating...
...a two meter rig...
...a barrel connector (N type)...

Geesus H. !

I saw the result of a lightening strike at Barkway on Royston Heath.
The lightening came down our waveguide without any damage but inside teh
equipemy huit it vapourised teh big circuit breaker on teh wall and left
a
hole wher it had been and chared melted wires some distance above and
below
wher the box had been mounted.

Can't think of a better place for "lightening" to strike than Barkway.

I kate it you where in eht RAF hewn all this happened?

No, Engineer (Microwave) with PYE Telecommunications
We had teh first non GPO television microwave link between Birmingham and
London.
We were trying to break teh GPO monopoly on supplying and also regulating
radio communications.
It must have worked because the GPO /BT is no longer the only supplieer.

CML building Birmingham, Meriden, Cold Ashby, Barkway, Hill Crest (Highgate,
just down teh road from the BBC station at Swains Lane)
We were contracted to ATV.
Teh Link was used to show the adverts going out in Birmingham to the
sponsors in London.

Thanks for taking the **** out of my creeping disability, It keeps a sens of
proportion for me,
console yourself that it won't last much longer and I won't be able to type
at all.

Gary7SLL

On 30 Jan 2004 14:57:22 -0800, (J. Harvey) wrote:

"Roger Halstead"
Rarely does the system suffer damage.

...one computer...
...one PolyPhaser...
...a repeater antenna...
...a section of 5/8ths inch Heliax...
...every bit of water proofing...
...all the silver plating...
...a two meter rig...
...a barrel connector (N type)...

Geesus H. !

Considering three strikes a year on average and this is not all the
same strike, and all but the antenna and Heliax have been
inexpensive...Yup.

I've had line noise trash a computer on a sunshiny day. Lost
everything except the CPU of all things.

Computers run 24 X 7 (bout 32,000 hours run time a year) and are hard
wired together with Cat 5 cable.
No problems since going to UPSs with line conditioning.

Last Fall, this one had over 57 transfers to the UPS over 3 months
including 3 brown outs, one black out (quite a few hours), and the
rest was line noise.


I guess so long as you think that you're happy,
then you're happy. ;-)

Every thing is relative. :-))

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


Carry on then.