Bob - An antenna expert (when I lived in central Florida) told me that
floating antennas will attract lightning. So, I always grounded my antennas
with an inside switch, and had a 60ft ground rod (washed-in water pipe)
directly under the center of my 70' tower base. Unlike many of my ham
friends, I never had any lightning damage to my rigs during 17 years of
living in the lightning capital. The mast had a number of burns on it when I
took it down to move north. I am sure it had more hits than the three I was
aware of. The other thing I did was loop the coax down to ground level, and
then back up (about 3') and through my window to the grounding switch in the
shack (bedroom). The theory there is that lightning doesn't like to reverse
direction and will usually jump from the shield to the ground rather than
loop back up and come into the house. The open feed line is an invitation
for the lightning to find its own way to ground - through your home. I
ground my feed lines with an outside switch these days, and so far still
have no hits on my radios. However, my antenna switch control box took
enough of a jolt from a close hit to burn out one diode. Andy K4YKZ