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![]() "Mohd Nazry Bin Mustapa": Anyone know how to make a simple lightning arrester (Homebrew) that really work in case of lightning. "David Robbins": the most basic one is a spark gap. these have been used since the first days of long telegraph lines. just position two sharp pointed metal pieces a small distance apart, connect one side to the cable and the other to a good ground. you want the distance as small as possible, but wide enough so your normal transmission power doesn't create an arc. The usual practice for radio antennas is to place a series capacitor downstream (towards the radio set) from the spark gap to dispense with the DC and low-frequency components of the lightning strike. In crude, fixed-pitch ASCII art, it would look like this: | | Antenna ---------+--------| |----------- To Radio | | | SPARK V Blocking GAP ^ Capacitor | Ground ---------+---------------------- The size of the capacitor is a compromise between not disrupting the RF circuitry and coupling the low-frequecy energy from the strike into the radio. Making the capacitor reactance in the order of a few ohms at the lowest operating frequency generally should work for 50-ohm coax. Jim, K7JEB, Glendale, AZ |
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